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cfxcncli   (jytclici.)  of  t/ii 
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Lalanve.     Le  Poxt  des  Arts  et  l'In'stitut 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  SVs  X  5iA  inches 


FRENCH  ETCHERS  OF  THE 
SECOND  EMPIRE 


WILLIAM  ASPENWALL  BRADLEY 


With  Illustrations 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN    COMPANY 

The  Riverside  Press  Cambridge 
I  ()  1 0 


COPYRIGHT,    191 1,    BY    FREDERICK    KEPPEL    &    CO. 
COPYRIGHT,    I913,    I9I4,    AND    I916,    BY    MUSEUM     OF    FINE    ARTS,    BOSTON 


ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Published  November  jqib 


~-j  :- 


7 


TO 
FITZROY    CARRINGTON 


(nontcnt, 


6 

Introduction xiii 

I.  Meryon  and  Baudelaire .3 

II.  Charles  Meryon,  Poet 18 

III,  Maxime  Lalanne 34 

IV.  Some  French  Etchers  and  Sonneteers      ...     41 

V.  The  Goncourts  and  their  Circle        ....     59 

VI.  Some  French  Artists  during  the  Siege  and  Com- 
mune     76 

VII.  CoROT  as  a  Lithographer 95 


J:jLJt  of  Sllii^tzatiotid 

Le  Pont  des  Arts  et  l'Institut,  by  Maxime  Lalanne 

Frontispiece 

Portrait  of  Charles  Meryon,  by  Felix  Bracquemond    .  4 

Portrait  of  Charles  Baudelaire,  by  Bracquemond        .  4 

Frontispiece  for  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai  of  Baudelaire,  by 

Bracquemond 6 

Le  Pont  au  Change  (with  Balloon),  by  Meryon     .       ..8 

Le  Pont  au  Change  (with  Birds),  by  Meryon          .       .  8 

Le  Petit  Pont,  by  Meryon 10 

Portrait  of  Charles  Meryon,  by  Leopold  Flameng        .  10 

Portrait  of  Charles  Meryon  (Head),  by  Bracquemond  18 

Verses  to  Zeeman  (1854),  by  Meryon 20 

Old  Gate  of  the  Palais  de  Justice,  by  Meryon      .       .  22 

Le  Stryge,  by  Meryon 22 

La  Rue  des  Mauvais  Garcons,  by  Meryon          ...  24 

La  Petite  Pompe,  by  Meryon 24 

Le  Pont-Neuf,  by  Meryon 24 

La  Morgue,  by  Meryon 26 

L'Abside  de  Notre-Dame  de  Paris,  by  Meryon         .       .  28 

Le  Pilote  de  Tonga  (1861),  by  Meryon         ....  28 

L'Attelage,  by  Meryon 30 

Le  Haag  —  PoiDS  de  la  Ville  d'Amsterdam,  by  Lalanne  34 


Plage  des  Vaches  Noires,  Villers,  by  Lalanne        .       .  34 

Les  Bords  de  la  Tamise,  by  Lalanne 36 

Rue  des  Marmousets,  by  Lalanne 36 

Bordeaux,  Vue  de  Cenon,  by  Lalanne 38 

Nogent,  b.y  Lalanne 38 

Bordeaux,  Quai  des  Chartrons,  by  Lalanne       ...  40 

Beuzeval,  by  Lalanne .       .40 

A  CussET,  by  Lalanne 40 

Le  Verger,  by  Daubigny 48 

L' Eclair,  bj^  Courtry  (after  Victor  Hugo) 50 

Promenade  hors  des  Murs,  by  Leys 50 

Une  Grande  Douleur,  by  Ribot 54 

The  Rookery,  by  Seymour  Haden 56 

Fleur  Exotique,  by  Manet 58 

Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt,  by  Gavarni      ...  60 

"Gavarni"  (Guillaume  Sulpice  Chevalier)      ...  66 

Edmond  de  Goncourt,  by  Bracquemond          ....  70 

Edmond  de  Goncourt,  by  Paul  Helleu 74 

AuTOMEDON  WITH  THE  HoRSES  OF  AcHiLLES,  by  Reguault  78 

"La  ville  de  Paris  investie  confie  a  l'air  son  appel 

A  la  France,"  by  Puvis  de  Chavannes 80 

"ECHAPPE     A     LA     SERRE     ENNEMIE     LE     MESSAGE     ATTENDU 
EXALTE    LE    CCEUR    DE     LA    FIERE      CITE,"     by     Puvls     de 

Chavannes 80 

La  Resistance,  etched  by  Bracquemond  from  the  statue  in 

snow  by  Falguiere. 82 

La  Republique,  etched  by  Bracquemond  from  the  bust  in 

snow  by  Moulin 84 


Avenue  de  Boulogne,  by  Lalanne 86 

From  Souvenirs  artistiques  du  Siege  de  Paris 

La  Make  d'Auteuil,  by  Lalanne 86 

From  Souvenirs  artistiques  du  Sihge  de  Paris 

Arms  of  the  City  of  Paris,  by  Martial   (Adolphe  Mar- 
tial Potement) 88 

La  Colonne  de  la  Place  Vendome,  by  Martial         .       .     92 
From  Paris  sous  la  Commune 

Le  Clocher  de  St.  Nicolas-Lez-Arras,  by  Corot      .       .  96 

Le  Dormoir  des  Vaches,  by  Corot 98 

Le  Moulin  de  Cuincy,  by  Corot 100 

Le  Repos  des  Philosophes,  b}-  Corot       .....  102 

Le  Coup  de  Vent,  by  Corot 102 

Saules  et  Peupliers  Blancs,  by  Corot          ....  104 

Souvenir  d'Italie,  l)y  Corot 104 


cJnttodiictio/LD 


|HESE  studies  appeared  originally  in  The 
Print-Collector^ s  Quarterly,  and  are  here  re- 
printed with  few  changes.  Though  not 
planned  as  a  series,  they  derive  a  certain 
unity  from  the  fact  that  all  deal  with  a  group  of 
French  graphic  artists,  mainly  etchers,  viewed  against 
the  background  of  French  life  and  letters  under  the 
Second  Empire. 

It  is  a  method  that  lends  itself  to  the  treatment  of  this 
period.  About  1860,  etching,  which  had  been  revived 
by  the  "Men  of  1830,"  began  to  attain  a  wider  popular- 
ity (partly  as  a  result  of  cross-channel  influences),  and 
to  no  class  did  it  make  a  more  definite  and  decided  ap- 
peal than  to  the  poets  and  men  of  letters.  Baudelaire, 
with  Philippe  Burty,  was  among  the  very  first  to  esti- 
mate at  its  real  worth  the  strange,  arresting  genius  of 
Charles  Meryon,  and  there  is  still  perhaps  no  more  pre- 
cise or  penetrating  statement  of  the  very  spirit  of  etch- 
ing than  is  to  be  found  in  the  brief  articles  to  which 
reference  is  so  often  made  in  the  following  pages. 

The  Goncourts  had  many  friends  and  acquaintances 
among  contemporary  etchers,  including  Bracquemond, 
who  instructed  them  in  the  principles  of  the  art,  as 
Maxime  Lalanne  instructed  Victor  Hugo.  The  latter, 
however,  unlike  Jules  de  Goncourt,  made  slight  use  of 
the  knowledge  he  thus  acquired  in  his  exile  on  the  is- 


land  of  Guernsey.  This  is,  in  a  way,  surprising.  For,  as 
M.  Emile  Berteaux  says  in  his  admirable  monograph  on 
Victor  Hugo  as  an  artist,  acid  or  soft  ground  etching  was 
marvellously  adapted  to  the  translating  of  those  violent 
"effects"  that  the  poet  himself  confessed  he  obtained 
by  using  the  barb  of  his  pen  as  freely  as  the  point. 

"But,  after  a  few  attempts,  he  stopped.  The  writer 
threw  away  the  needle  which  threatened  to  make  him 
forget  his  pen.  He  did  not  wish  to  give  the  lie  to  the 
words  that  Gautier  had  wa-itten  some  years  earlier,  in 
presenting  the  ch'awings  of  his  illustrious  friend  as  a 
'simple  recreation':  'Ce  n'est  pas  trop  de  tout  un 
homme  pour  un  art.'" 

A  number  of  Hugo's  drawings  were,  however,  exe- 
cuted by  other  hands.  One  was  the  striking  evocation 
of  a  city  in  ruins  called  L' Eclair,  which  was  etched  by 
Charles  Courtry  for  Sormets  et  Eoux-fortes,  and  which  is 
here  reproduced  in  connection  with  the  article  on  that 
significant,  if  not  particularly  inspired,  volume.  Another 
was  a  sketch  whose  origin  makes  it  of  special  interest  to 
Americans.  In  1859,  Hugo,  moved  by  the  hopeless  but 
heroic  exploit  of  John  Brown,  wa'ote  a  vigorous  letter 
to  the  United  States  Government,  protesting  against 
his  execution,  and  prophesying  the  evil  consequences 
that  would  result  from  such  an  act  of  repression.  "At 
the  same  time,"  to  quote  once  more  from  M.  Ber- 
teaux, "thinking  of  the  waiting  gallows,  he  drew  several 
silhouettes  of  men  that  had  been  hanged  —  funereal 
shades  blacker  than  the  night,  a  ray  of  light  descending 
towards  them." 

The  most  somber  and  vigorous  of  these  drawings  he 
gave  to  his  brother-in-law,  Paul  Chenay,  who  executed 
in  a  few  days  "a  beautiful  plate  in  mezzotint."    Un- 


fortunately,  however,  Hugo,  struck  by  the  correspond- 
ence between  the  date  of  John  Brown's  capture,  and 
that  of  the  imperial  coup  d'etat,  had  inscribed  at  the 
bottom  of  his  drawing  the  two  words:  "Deux  Decem- 
hre."  As  a  result,  the  proofs  (with  a  single  exception) 
were  confiscated  and  destroyed  at  the  printer's.  The 
plate  seemed  destined  never  to  see  the  light.  But  several 
months  later  a  new  ministry  removed  the  interdict,  and 
prints  were  circulated,  though  without  the  seditious  le- 
gend. Hugo  was  so  pleased  with  Chenay's  work  in  this 
instance  that  he  gave  him  some  of  his  other  drawings  to 
execute,  and  an  album  containing  them  appeared  in  1863 
with  a  preface  by  Gautier. 

One  of  Hugo's  friends  was  the  romantic  etcher,  Celes- 
tin  Nanteuil,  with  whom  he  once  traveled  through  "Old 
France,"  collecting  sketches  and  impressions  of  Gothic 
architecture.  Both  were  strongly  influenced  by  Piranesi, 
whose  great  plates  of  Roman  antiquities,  impregnated 
with  his  own  spirit  of  the  past,  had  recently  been  repulv 
lished  in  Paris,  and  who  was  largely  responsible  for  the 
spread  of  a  romantic,  or  "expressive,"  style  of  architec- 
tural treatment.  Even  Meryon,  so  unlike  either  Nan- 
teuil or  Hugo,  did  not  escape  this  current  tendency, 
though  curiously  enough  his  immediate  master  was  not 
the  imaginative,  melodramatic  Piranesi,  but  the  realis- 
tic, matter-of-fact  Dutch  etcher,  Reynier  Nooms,  or 
Zeeman. 

Meryon,  who  thus  combines  its  two  strongly  contrast- 
ing schools  or  tendencies,  represents  the  culmination  of 
modern  French  etching,  as  well  as  its  highest  individual 
accomplishment.  The  period  following  the  publication 
of  his  Eaux-fortes  sur  Paris  is,  on  the  whole,  in  spite  of 
its  technical  triumphs  and  rapidly  spreading  popularity, 


one  of  gradual  decline  until,  as  we  see  in  Sonnets  et  Eaux- 
fortes,  and  in  the  later  work  of  Lalanne,  the  etched  plate 
comes  to  be  regarded  for  the  most  part  merely  as  a 
superior  sort  of  illustrative  and  reproductive  medium. 
As  such  it  seemed  doomed  when  the  invention  of  the 
photogravure  process  made  possible  an  enormous  in- 
crease in  the  production  of  "prints"  —  particularly  for 
the  embellishment  of  books  —  at  a  corresponding  reduc- 
tion of  cost.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  this  very 
release  from  alien  requirements  imposed  upon  it  from 
the  outside,  has  proved  a  powerful  stimulus  to  a  second 
revival  of  etching,  in  our  own  day.  In  this  respect  its  for- 
tunes present  a  curiously  close  parallel  to  those  of  wood- 
engraving,  which  at  first  threatened  to  disappear  en- 
tirely when  displaced  by  the  halftone,  but  which  is 
steadily  reasserting  itself  as  a  medium  of  original  ex- 
pression. It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  artist,  Au- 
guste  Lepere,  who  has  done  more  than  any  one  else  in 
France  to  reestablish  wood-engraving  on  a  proper  basis 
of  independence,  is  also  one  of  those  who  have  most 
notably  renewed  the  great  tradition  of  landscape  and 
architectural  etching  in  that  country.  With  Lepere  and 
his  contemporaries,  however,  we  are  no  longer  among 
the  etchers  of  the  Second  Empire,  but  have  long  since 
reached  those  of  the  Third  Republic. 

W.  A.  Bradley. 

Bailey's  Island,  Maine, 
July,  1916. 


cftciich   {[^tchci.)  of  the 
(Recoil J  uniplte 


S^tcncli  cytc/ietd  of  t/ie 
(Second  (^tnplte 

I 

MEEYON  AND    BAUDELAIRE 

(jLL  French  poets  of  the  middle  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century  were  interested,  theoreti- 
cally at  least,  in  painting  and  the  graphic 
arts  generally.  From  Theophile  Gautier, 
godfather  of  Parnassianism,  who  reserved  for  his  prose 
the  full  resources  of  his  superb  Turneresque  palette, 
to  the  young  Verlaine,  author  of  Fetes  Galantes  and 
Poemes  Saturniens,  pictorial  preoccupations  were,  on  the 
the  whole,  paramount.  Charles  Baudelaire  almost  alone 
appears,  in  part,  an  exception  to  this  rule;  but  if,  in  his 
work,  the  purely  visual  element  is  less  predominant  than 
in  that  of  most  of  his  contemporaries  —  if  the  images  of 
sight  yield  there  in  number  and  in  clear  evocative  power 
to  those  of  sound  and  of  scent,  thereby  preluding  the 
way  for  a  new  poetic  dispensation  —  he  nevertheless  fits 
into  the  late  Romantic  tradition,  if  only  by  reason  of  his 
keen  aesthetic  appreciation  of  the  arts  of  design,  and  of 
his  association,  as  a  disinterested  friend  or  sympathetic 
critic,  with  many  of  the  most  illustrious  artists  of  the 
age.  Himself  a  rebel  and  an  outlaw  in  the  domain  of 
orthodox  taste,  though  with  a  distinct  tinge  of  the  tradi- 


tional,  he  was  especially  drawn  to  the  insurgent  leader, 
like  Delacroix,  his  championship  of  whom  is  as  famous 
as  his  espousal  of  the  cause  of  Wagner's  music  in  Paris, 
or  to  the  solitary  attarde  of  Romanticism  who,  like  Con- 
stantin  Guys,  worked  out  his  own  salvation  in  his  own 
way.  It  is  not  that  ho  did  not  welcome  new  movements 
in  all  their  collectivity  of  talents  and  temperaments;  but 
these,  to  find  favor  with  him,  must  be  vouched  for  by 
unmistakable  evidences  of  creative  vigor  and  original- 
ity in  the  individual  artists,  not  merely  by  pretentious 
dogmas  or  plausible  theories.  Intellectual  distinctions 
counted  Init  little  with  him  in  matters  of  art,  and  a  new 
way  of  rendering  what  was  actually  seen  or  felt  seemed 
to  him  of  infinitely  more  importance  than  any  merely 
academic  discussion  as  to  what  an  artist  should  or 
should  not  look  for,  deliberately,  in  order  to  put  it  into 
or  leave  it  out  of  his  pictures. 

Thus  it  was  that  while  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  at 
the  realists  who  were  not  really  observers,  he  turned  an 
attentive  eye  to  the  work  of  the  group  of  young  painter- 
etchers  who,  about  1859,  were  beginning  to  attract  at- 
tention in  the  salons.  Baudelaire  thought  highly  of 
etching  l^ecause  it  afforded  an  opportunity  for  "the 
most  clean-cut  possible  translation  of  the  character  of 
the  artist,"  and  he  was  attracted  to  those  who  were  en- 
gaged in  reviving  this  almost  obsolete  medium,  because 
they  gave  clear  proof  in  their  work  of  that  personal 
force  and  distinction  which  he  valued  above  all  else,  and 
which  he  was  always  on  the  alert  to  discover  in  the  pro- 
ductions of  the  new  and  the  unknown. 

In  his  article,  Pei7itres  et  Aqua-fortistes,  included  in 
the  volume  of  his  collected  works  entitled  UArt  Ro- 
mantique,  Baudelaire  mentions  the  following  etchers  as 


%^ 


Portrait  of  Charles  Meryon 

From  the  etching  by  Felix  Bracqueniond,  done  in  1853 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  Svici  X  O'k  inches 


Portrait  of  Charles  Baudelaire 

From  the  etching  by  Felix  Brarciuomond.  Of  the  same  size  as  the 
oriKiiial  ctcliinf;.  Evidently  an  excellent  likeness,  since  it  exactly 
renders  that  ecclesiastical  aspect  of  the  poet  which  made  one  of 
his  friends  compare  him  to  a  cardinal. 


among  those  through  whose  efforts  the  medium  was  to 
recover  its  ancient  vitahty:  Seymour  Haden,  Manet, 
Legros,  Bracquemond,  Jongkind,  Meryon,  Millet,  Dau- 
bigny,  Saint-Marcel,  Jacquemart,  and  Whistler.  With 
at  least  two  of  these,  on  the  evidence  of  his  published 
correspondence,^  he  had  personal  relations:  Bracque- 
mond and  Meryon.  The  name  of  the  former  occurs  fre- 
quently in  the  letters  with  reference  to  a  device  which 
Baudelaire  wished  to  adopt  as  a  frontispiece  to  the  sec- 
ond edition  of  Fleurs  du  Mai.  The  idea  of  this  device 
came  to  him,  as  he  writes  to  Felix  Nadar  (May  16, 1859), 
while  turning  the  leaves  of  the  Histoire  des  Danses  Ma- 
cabres,  by  Hyacinthe  Langlois.  It  was  to  be  "an  arbor- 
escent skeleton,  the  legs  and  the  ribs  forming  the  trunk, 
the  arms  extended  in  the  form  of  a  cross  breaking  into 
leaf  and  shoot,  and  protecting  several  rows  of  poisonous 
plants  arranged  in  rising  tiers  of  pots,  as  in  a  green- 
house." In  casting  about  for  an  artist  to  execute  this 
design,  Baudelaire  mentions  and  dismisses  Dore,  Pen- 
guilly  ■ —  whom  he  afterward  wished  he  had  taken  — 
and  Celestin  Nanteuil.  Finally,  perhaps  at  the  instance 
of  his  publisher,  Poulet-Malassis,  he  chose  Bracque- 
mond, —  a  most  unhappy  selection  as  it  turned  out,  for 
that  artist  was  either  unable  or  unwilling  to  grasp  the 
poet's  conception,  and  the  plate  which  he  etched  for  this 
purpose  was  not  used.  A  few  proofs  were  pulled,  how- 
ever, and  impressions  in  both  the  first  and  second  states 
of  the  plate  are  now  in  the  Samuel  P.  Avery  collection  in 
the  New  York  Pul^lic  Lil)rary. 

Baudelaire's  negotiations  with  the  "terrible  Bracque- 
mond," as  he  came  to  call  him,  were  carried  on  for 
the  most  part  through  Poulet-Malassis,  which  perhaps 

1  Charles  Baudelaire:  Leltrcs,  1841-1866.   Paris,  1907. 
5 


affords  a  partial  explanation  of  the  misunderstanding 
concerning  the  Macabre  frontispiece.  And,  although  he 
speaks  in  one  letter  of  having  met  the  artist  and  repeated 
verbally  the  instructions  which  he  had  already  given, 
with  characteristically  minute  attention  to  detail,  in 
writing,  no  such  special  interest  attaches  to  this  meet- 
ing, by  no  means  uniciue,  as  to  that  between  Baudelaire 
and  Meryon  which  occurred  about  the  same  time,  and 
to  which  we  owe  one  of  the  most  vivid  and  fantastic  pre- 
sentments we  possess  of  that  mad  genius.  In  his  Salon 
de  1859,  Baudelaire  had  written  of  Meryon  with  an  en- 
thusiasm which  awoke  a  responsive  reverberation  in  the 
breast  of  Victor  Hugo. 

"Since  you  know  M.  Meryon,"  the  latter  wrote  to 
Baudelaire  (April  29,  1860),  "tell  him  that  his  splendid 
etchings  have  dazzled  me.  Without  color,  with  nothing 
save  shadow  and  light,  chiaroscuro  pure  and  simple  and 
left  to  itself:  that  is  the  problem  of  etching.  M.  Meryon 
solves  it  magisterially.  What  he  does  is  superb.  His 
plates  live,  radiate,  and  think.  He  is  worthy  of  the  pro- 
found and  luminous  page  with  which  he  has  inspired 
you." 

This  page,  which  Baudelaire  afterward  incorporated 
in  his  Peintres  et  Aqua-fortistes,  where  he  speaks  further 
of  Meryon  as  "the  true  type  of  the  accomplished  aqua- 
fortiste,''  and  praises  the  famous  perspective  of  San 
Francisco  as  his  masterpiece,  does,  indeed,  betray  the 
subtle  penetration  of  the  poet  into  the  very  spirit  of  his 
fellow-artist:  "By  the  severity,  the  delicacy,  and  the 
certitude  of  his  design,  M.  Meryon  recalls  what  is  best  in 
the  old  aqua-fortistes.  I  have  rarely  seen  represented 
with  more  poetry  the  natural  solemnity  of  a  great  capi- 
tal. The  majesties  of  accumulated  stone,  the  spires  point- 


Bracquemond.  Frontispiece  for  "Les  Fleurs  du  Mal"  of  Baudelaire 

The  seven  plants  symbolize  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  and  the  outstretched 
arms  of  the  skeleton  will  support,  later,  the  Fruits  of  Evil.  This  romantic 
and  remarkable  frontispiece  was  never  used.  Baudelaire  criticized  the  draw- 
ing of  the  skeleton  severely,  as  well  as  the  spirit  and  arrangement  of  the  whole 
design. 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  0'!i  X  'l''i«  inches 


ing  a  finger  to  the  skies,  the  obelisks  of  industry  vomiting 
their  thick  clouds  of  smoke  heavenward,  the  prodigious 
scaffoldings  of  monuments  under  repair,  relieved  against 
the  solid  mass  of  architecture,  their  tracery  of  a  filmy 
and  paradoxical  beauty,  the  misty  sky  charged  with 
wrath  and  with  rancor,  the  depths  of  the  perspectives 
augmented  by  the  thought  of  the  dramas  contained 
therein,  —  none  of  the  complex  elements  of  which  the 
dolorous  and  glorious  setting  of  civilization  is  composed 
is  here  forgotten." 

Grateful  for  such  recognition  on  the  part  of  a  dis- 
tinguished man  of  letters  who  was  also  accepted  as  one 
of  the  leading  art  critics  of  the  day  in  Paris,  Merj^on  evi- 
dently wrote  to  Baudelaire,  thanking  him  and  asking 
permission  to  call;  for  in  his  letter  of  January  8,  1860,  to 
Poulet-Malassis,  the  poet  writes  as  follows :  — 

"What  I  write  to-night,"  he  begins,  "is  worth  the 
trouble  of  writing:  M.  Meryon  has  sent  me  his  card,  and 
we  have  met.  He  said  to  me:  Yoii  live  in  a  hotel  whose 
name  must  have  attracted  you  because  of  the  relation  it 
hears,  I  'presume,  to  your  tastes.  —  Then  I  looked  at  the 
envelope  of  his  letter.  On  it  was  'Hotel  de  Thebes,'  and 
yet  his  letter  reached  me." 

It  is  necessary  to  interrupt  the  letter  at  this  point  to 
explain  what  is  obscure  in  the  foregoing  allusion  for  one 
not  familiar  with  Baudelaire's  haunts  and  homes  in 
Paris.  He  was  living  at  this  time,  not  in  the  Hotel  Pimo- 
dan  where  he  dwelt  so  long,  and  where  he  held  those 
famous  meetings  described  by  Gautier  in  his  introduc- 
tory essay  to  Fleurs  clu  Mai,  but  in  modest  quarters  in 
the  Hotel  de  Dieppe,  22,  rue  d'Amsterdam,  whose  prin- 
cipal advantage  was  its  proximity  totheGare  de  I'Ouest, 
whence  he  took  the  train  for  Honfleur  on  his  frequent 


visits  to  his  mother.  Thus,  through  a  bizarre  confusion 
between  the  two  words,  Dieppe  and  Thebes,  is  explained 
Meryon's  curious  mistake  in  addressing  liis  letter  to 
Baudelaire. 

The  poet  proceeds  with  the  following  report  of  their 
conversation:  "In  one  of  his  great  plates/  he  [Meryon] 
has  substituted  for  a  little  balloon  a  flight  of  birds  of 
prey,  and,  when  I  remarked  to  him  that  it  was  lacking  in 
verisimilitude  to  put  so  many  eagles  into  a  Parisian  sky, 
he  replied  that  what  he  had  done  was  not  devoid  of 
foundation  in  fact,  since  ces  gens-ld  [the  imperial  govern- 
ment] had  often  released  eagles  so  as  to  study  the  pres- 
ages, according  to  the  rite,  —  and  that  this  had  been 
printed  in  the  newspapers,  even  in  Le  Moniteur. 

"I  must  tell  you  that  he  makes  no  attempt  to  conceal 
his  respect  for  all  superstitions,  but  he  explains  them 
badly,  and  he  sees  cabalistic  mysteries  everywhere. 

''He  drew  my  attention  to  the  fact,  in  another  of  his 
plates,  that  the  shadows  cast  by  one  of  the  masonry 
constructions  of  the  Pont-Neuf  -  on  the  lateral  wall  of 
the  quay  represented  exactly  the  profile  of  a  sphinx; 
that  this  had  been,  on  his  part,  quite  involuntary,  and 
that  he  had  only  remarked  the  singularity  later,  on  re- 
calling that  this  design  had  been  made  a  short  time  be- 
fore the  coup  d'etat.  But  the  Prince  is  the  real  person 
who,  by  his  acts  and  his  visage,  bears  the  closest  re- 
semblance to  a  sphinx. 

"He  asked  me  if  I  had  read  the  tales  of  a  certain 
Edgar  Poe.  I  answered  that  I  knew  them  better  than 
any  one  else,  and  for  a  good  reason.  He  then  asked  me 
in  a  very  emphatic  manner,  if  I  believed  in  the  reality  of 

1  The  Pont-au-Change. 

2  An  error  of  Baudelaire's.  The  plate  is  the  Petit-Pont. 


O     Sa    X 


Ol    ^    Cj  _      ?;^ 

&^  to  s-H 
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■^a^-"  ,„ 

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.^.g  03  3 

this  Edgar  Poe.  I  naturally  asked  him  to  whom  he  at- 
tributed all  his  tales.  He  replied:  '  To  a  syndicate  of  men 
of  letters  who  are  very  clever,  very  powerful,  and  who  are  in 
touch  with  everything.^  And  here  is  one  of  his  reasons: 
'  The  Rue  Morgue.  /  have  made  a  design  of  the  Morgue. 
• —  An  Orang-outang.  I  have  often  been  compared  to  a 
monkey.  —  This  monkey  murders  two  women,  a  mother 
and  her  daughter.  /  also  have  morally  assassinated  two 
women,  a  mother  and  her  daughter.  —  /  have  always 
taken  the  story  as  an  allusion  to  my  misfortunes.  You 
would  he  doing  me  a  great  favor  if  you  could  find  out  for  me 
the  date  when  Edgar  Poe,  supposing  that  he  was  not  helped 
by  any  one,  composed  this  story,  so  that  I  could  see  if  the 
date  coincided  with  my  adventures.'' 

"He  spoke  to  me,  with  admiration,  of  Michelet's 
book  on  Jeanne  cVArc,  but  he  is  convinced  that  this 
book  is  not  by  Michelet. 

"One  of  his  great  preoccupations  is  cabalistical 
science,  but  he  interprets  it  in  a  strange  fashion  that 
would  make  a  cabalist  laugh. 

"Do  not  laugh  at  all  this  with  mechants  bougres. 
For  nothing  in  the  world  would  I  wish  to  injure  a  man 
of  talent.  .  .  . 

"After  he  left  me,  I  asked  myself  how  it  happened 
that  I,  who  have  always  had,  in  my  mind  and  in  my 
nerves,  all  that  was  needed  to  make  me  mad,  had  not 
become  so.  Seriously,  I  addressed  to  heaven  the 
thanksgivings  of  the  Pharisee." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Baudelaire  should  have 
been  somewhat  disconcerted  by  this  interview  which 
confirmed  so  strikingly  the  reports  of  the  mental 
malady  of  his  visitor  to  which  he  had  alluded  in  his 


Salon  de  1859,  and  that  he  should  soon  have  sought, 
after  some  brief  intercourse,  to  avoid  personal  and 
private  encounters  which  might  have  proved  embar- 
rassing. He  gave  notice  in  ways  the  artist  could  not 
long  mistake,  that  he  did  not  wish  to  continue  the 
acquaintance  on  a  footing  of  intimacy;  though,  as 
Crcpet,  in  his  Charles  Baudelaire  ^  points  out,  he  by  no 
means  ceased  to  interest  himself  in  the  artist,  several 
sets  of  whose  Eaux-Fories  sur  Paris  he  was  instrumental, 
with  one  or  two  other  admirers  of  Meryon,  in  having 
purchased  by  the  Ministry.  Poor  Meryon!  With  an 
incomplete  realization  of  his  own  condition,  which  ren- 
dered him  incapable  of  divining  the  real  truth,  he  felt  he 
had  offended  Baudelaire  in  some  way,  and  finally  ad- 
dressed him  the  following  appeal,  tragic  in  its  note  of 
noble  and  unconscious  pathos :  — 

''Dear  Sir:  I  called  on  you  yesterday  evening  at  the 
Hotel  de  Dieppe.  I  was  informed  that  you  had 
changed  your  domicile.  I  wished,  above  all,  to  see 
you,  in  order  to  learn  from  your  own  lips  that  you 
were  not  angry  with  me,  for  I  do  not  think  I  have 
ever  done  anything  to  you  which  could  serve  as  a  mo- 
tive for  your  change  of  manner  toward  me.  Only,  as 
the  last  letter  which  I  wrote  you  has  remained  unan- 
swered, and  as  three  times  I  have  left  my  name  at 
your  dwelling  without  my  having  had  the  slightest 
word  from  you,  I  am  entitled  to  believe  that  you  have 
some  reason  for  breaking  with  me.  I  did  not  remind 
you  of  your  promise  to  write  a  newspaper  article 
about  my  work,  because,  quite  frankly,  I  was  sure  that 

^  Charles  Baudelaire,    ^tude  hiographique  d'Eughne  Crepet  revue  et 
mise  au  jour  par  Jacques  Crepet.   Paris,  1907. 

10 


Meryon.     Le  Petit  Pont 

"  He  drew  my  attention  to  the  fact,  in  another  of  his  plates,  that  the  shadows 
cast  by  one  of  the  masonry  constructions  of  the  Pont-Neuf  on  the  lateral 
wall  of  the  quay  represented  exactly  the  profile  of  a  sphinx;  that  this  had 
been,  on  his  part,  quite  involuntary,  and  that  he  had  only  remarked  this  sinsu- 
larity  later,  on  recalling  that  this  design  had  been  made  a  short  time  before 
the  coup  d'etat." 

Charles  Baudelaire  in  a  letter  to  Poulet-Malassis  (January  8,  ISGO). 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  O'sX  71/4  inches 


-a!i3 


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<?  c  t< 
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;-Sac   - 

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g  w  c  a^ 


you  could  make  much  better  employment  of  your  time 
and  of  your  literary  skill.  My  etchings  are  known  to 
nearly  all  whom  they  could  interest  and  rather  too 
much  good  has  been  said  of  them.  As  to  the  interrup- 
tion of  our  relations,  which  have  been  but  of  brief 
duration  and  of  slight  importance,  I  agree  to  this 
without  a  word  if  such  is  your  desire,  and  I  shall  con- 
serve, none  the  less,  the  recollection  of  the  eminent 
services  you  have  rendered  me  in  coming  to  see  me, 
and  in  occupying  yourself  with  me  at  a  time  when  I 
was  utterly  destitute. 

"I  have  forwarded  to  M.  Lavielle,  whom  I  had  the 
advantage  of  meeting  once  with  you,  the  set  of  my 
views,  reworked  and  a  trifle  modified;  he  has,  per- 
haps, shown  them  to  you.  I  have  had  difficulty  in 
procuring  the  ten  sets  of  them  (the  printer  being  very 
busy  at  that  time)  that  I  have  disposed  of,  with  suffi- 
cient rapidity.  I  have  no  longer  any  left  and  I  have 
destroyed  the  Petit-Pont,  which  I  propose  to  engrave 
anew,  after  I  have  made  in  it  some  rather  important 
corrections. 

"Adieu,  dear  sir,  with  all  possible  good  wishes. 
"I  am  your  sincere  and  devoted  friend, 

"C.  Meryon. 

"20,  rue  Duperre." 

The  letter  to  which  Meryon  refers  in  the  opening 
paragraph  of  the  foregoing  as  having  remained  unan- 
swered by  Baudelaire  is  doubtless  that  bearing  the 
date  of  February  23,  1860,  which  is  the  only  other  one 
given  by  Crepet  in  the  appendix  to  his  volume.  This 
is  it:  — 


11 


''Bear  Sir:  I  send  you  a  set  of  my  'Views  of  Paris.'  ^ 
As  you  can  see,  they  are  well  printed,  on  Chinese 
tissue  mounted  on  laid  paper,  and  consequently  de 
honne  tenue.  It  is  on  my  part  a  feeble  means  of  rec- 
ognizing the  devotion  you  have  shown  on  my  behalf. 
However,  I  dare  hope  that  they  will  serve  sometimes 
to  fix  your  imagination,  curious  of  the  things  of  the 
past.  I  myself,  who  made  them  at  an  epoch,  it  is  true, 
when  my  naive  heart  was  still  seized  with  sudden 
aspirations  toward  a  happiness  which  I  believed  I 
could  attain,  look  over  some  of  these  pieces  with  a 
veritable  pleasure.  They  may,  then,  be  able  to  pro- 
duce nearly  the  same  effect  upon  you  who  also  love  to 
dream. 

"I  have  not  yet  terminated  the  notes  that  I  prom- 
ised to  make  in  order  to  aid  you  in  your  work;  at  all 
events,  I  shall  go  to  see  you  soon  to  discuss  the  matter 
with  you  further.  As  the  publisher  recoils  before  the 
steps  which  would  still  have  to  be  taken,  he  says,  for 
the  placing  of  these  prints,  there  is  nothing  pressing 
about  the  affair.   Thus,  do  not  let  this  disturb  you. 

"Adieu,  monsieur;  I  hope  that  before  your  depar- 
ture, I  shall  be  able  to  profit  by  the  kindly  reception 
that  I  have  received  from  you. 

"I  am  your  very  humble  and  very  devoted  ser- 
vant. 

"I  am  going  to  try  to  place  sets  with  those  persons 

1  Baudelaire  had  already  tried  to  obtain  a  set  of  these  prints. 
In  writing  to  Charles  Assclineau  (February  20,  1859)  he  com- 
missions his  friend  to  get  from  Edouard  Houssaye  ' '  all  the  en- 
gravings of  Meryon  (views  of  Paris),  good  proofs  on  Chinese 
paper.  Pour  parer  notre  chambre,  as  Dorine  says."  He  was  not 
successful,  however,  at  that  time.  In  quoting  Moliere,  Baude- 
laire refers  to  Toinette's  speech  in  Le  Malade  Imaginaire  (Act  II, 
sc.  vi). 

12 


who  have  been  so  good,  on  your  recommendation,  as 
to  interest  themselves  in  this  work. 

"Meryon. 

"20,  rue  Duperre." 

This  letter  renders  sufficiently  clear  the  kind  of  serv- 
ice Baudelaire  had  rendered  Meryon  over  and  above 
the  public  praise  contained  in  his  writings.  What,  at 
the  first  glance,  is  less  certain,  is  the  work  on  which 
the  poet  was  engaged  at  this  time  and  for  which 
Meryon,  on  his  own  testimony,  had  promised  to  assist 
him  with  notes.  In  a  footnote  to  this  letter,  M.  Jacques 
Crepet  states  that  it  was  "doubtless  L'eau-forte  est  a 
la  mode,  an  anonymous  article  published  by  the  Re- 
vue anecdotique  in  the  latter  half  of  April,  1862." 
Personally,  I  doubt  the  correctness  of  this  conjecture. 
One  has  but  to  turn  to  Baudelaire's  letters  of  the 
period  to  see  that  there  was  then  under  discussion 
another  piece  of  work  for  which  Meryon  would  have 
been  much  more  likely  to  give  assistance  in  the  form 
of  notes,  since  it  directly  concerned  himself.  Indeed, 
the  matter  almost  amounted  to  a  project  of  collabora- 
tion between  Meryon  and  Baudelaire.  The  publisher 
Delatre  had  promised  to  bring  out  an  album  of  the 
Vues  de  Paris,  and  had  asked  the  poet  to  prepare 
some  text  for  the  plates.  The  first  reference  to  this 
tentative  undertaking  occurs  in  Baudelaire's  letter  of 
February  16,  1860  (just  a  week  before  Meryon's),  to 
Poulet-Malassis :  — 

"And  then  Meryon!"  —  he  broaches  the  matter  ab- 
ruptly, after  having  expressed  his  impatience  at  the 
attitude  of  two  other  artists,  Champfleury  and  Du- 
ranty,  friends  of  his,  toward  Constantin  Guys,  and  at 


a  certain  note  of  pedantry  and  dogmatism  that  was 
stealing  into  art  under  the  influence  and  sanction  of 
"reahsm"  —  "And  then  Meryon!  Oh,  as  for  him,  it 
is  intolerable.  Delatre  asks  me  to  write  some  text  for 
the  album.  Good!  there  is  an  occasion  to  write  some 
reveries  —  ten  lines,  twenty  or  thirty  lines  —  on  l^eauti- 
ful  engravings,  the  philosophical  reveries  of  a  Parisian 
flaneur.  But  Meryon,  whose  idea  is  different,  objects. 
I  am  to  say:  on  the  right  you  see  this;  on  the  left  you 
see  that.  I  must  say:  here  originally  there  were  twelve 
windows,  reduced  to  six  by  the  artist,  and  finally  I 
must  go  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville  to  find  out  the  exact 
epoch  of  the  demolitions.  M.  Meryon  talks,  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  ceiling,  and  without  listening  to  any  ob- 
servation." 

Thus  it  was  historical  and  antiquarian  notes  that, 
in  all  probability,  Meryon  had  promised  to  jot  down 
to  facilitate  the  composition  of  a  running  commentary 
on  the  etchings.  Meryon's  reference  to  the  reluctance 
of  the  publisher  in  the  very  same  paragraph  in  which 
he  speaks  of  these  notes,  serves  to  remove  the  least 
doubt  as  to  what  is  meant.  When  he  tells  Baudelaire 
not  to  be  disturbed,  it  is  clearly  as  to  the  time  at  his 
disposal  for  the  preparation  of  his  text.  Baudelaire, 
however,  seems  to  have  l)een  less  concerned  about  his 
own  share  in  the  work  than  about  the  fate  of  the 
project  as  a  whole.  Evidently  he  was  not  satisfied 
at  the  prospects  of  the  work  with  Delatre,  for,  on 
March  9,  1860,  he  wrote  in  a  postscript  to  Poulet- 
Malassis :  — 

"I  turn  my  letter,  to  ask  you,  very  seriously,  if  it 
would  not  be  advisable  for  you  to  be  the  publisher  of 
Meryon's  album  (which  will  be  augmented)  and  for 


which  I  am  to  write  the  text.  You  know  that,  unfor- 
tunately, this  text  will  not  be  in  accordance  with  my 
wishes. 

"I  warn  you  that  I  have  made  overtures  to  the 
house  of  Gide.  .  .  . 

"This  Meryon  does  not  know  how  to  go  about 
things;  he  knows  nothing  of  life.  He  does  not  know 
how  to  sell;  he  does  not  know  how  to  find  a  pul^lisher. 
His  work  is  readily  salable." 

And  again,  on  March  13,  he  writes,  in  response  to 
some  proposition  from  his  friend :  — 

"Concerning  Meryon,  do  you  mean  by  buying  the 
plates  to  buy  the  metal  plates,  or  rather  the  right  of 
selling  an  indefinite  number  of  proofs  from  them?  I 
can  conceive  that  you  fear  the  conversations  with 
Meryon.  You  should  carry  on  the  negotiations  by 
letter  (20,  rue  Duperre).  I  warn  you  that  Merj^on's 
great  fear  is  lest  the  publisher  should  change  the 
format  and  the  paper.  .  .  .  What  you  say  to  me  of 
Meryon  does  not  affect  what  I  write  to  you  concerning 
him." 

The  excellent  lousiness  sense,  the  note  of  prudence 
and  painstaking,  that  comes  out  in  all  this  correspon- 
dence on  the  part  of  Baudelaire,  and  which  is  scarcely 
less  notable  than  his  unwearied  devotion  to  the  inter- 
ests of  his  friends,  ought  to  go  far  toward  discoun- 
tenancing the  theory  that  a  poet  cannot  be  a  good 
man  of  affairs.  Still  again  he  writes  on  the  same 
subject,  with  recapitulations  of  what  he  had  said  be- 
fore, to  the  same  correspondent:^ — 

"I  am  very  much  embari-assed,  inon  cher,  to  reply 
to  you  in  regard  to  the  Meryon  afTair.  I  have  no  rights 
in  the  matter  whatsoever;  M.  Meryon  has  repulsed. 


with  a  species  of  horror,  the  idea  of  a  text  composed 
of  a  dozen  Kttle  poems  or  sonnets;  he  has  refused 
the  idea  of  poetic  meditations  in  prose.  So  as  not  to 
wound  him,  I  have  promised  to  write  for  him,  in  re- 
turn for  three  copies  with  the  good  proofs,  a  text  in 
the  style  of  a  guide  or  manual,  unsigned.  It  is,  there- 
fore, with  him  alone  that  you  will  have  to  treat.  .  .  . 
The  thing  has  presented  itself  to  my  mind  very  sim- 
ply. On  one  side,  an  unfortunate  madman,  who  does 
not  know  how  to  conduct  his  affairs,  and  who  has 
executed  a  beautiful  work;  on  the  other,  you,  on 
whose  list  I  want  to  see  the  best  books  possible.  As 
the  journalists  say,  I  have  considered  for  you  the 
double  pleasure  of  a  good  bit  of  business  and  of  a  good 
act."  And  he  compares  Meryon's  case  with  that  of 
Daumier,  then  without  a  publisher,  to  wind  whom  up, 
''like  a  clock,"  would  also,  he  tells  Poulet-Malassis,  be 
"a  great  and  good  bit  of  business." 

This  is  the  last  reference  in  any  of  the  letters  to 
Meryon,  or  to  the  album,  for  which  Baudelaire  never 
wrote  his  text,  since  no  publisher  was  willing  to  pub- 
hsh  the  work.  Had  Poulet-Malassis  not  failed  in  1861, 
it  might  have  appeared,  and  then,  in  spite  of  the  re- 
strictions imposed  upon  the  restive  spirit  of  the  poet, 
we  might  have  had  in  Baudelaire's  text  some  literary 
equivalent  of  Meryon's  etchings.  How  sympathetic 
this  would  have  been,  is  shown  by  the  descriptive  and 
interpretative  passage  from  the  Salon  de  1859  already 
quoted,  which,  in  a  few  sentences,  completely  defines 
the  form  of  Meryon's  imaginative  genius,  and  reveals 
the  inmost  source  of  its  power  to  stir  the  emotions. 

There  was,  indeed,  much  that  was  common  to  the 
genius  of   Meryon  and  of   Baudelaire.     The  work  of 


both  was  profoundly  personal,  and  in  l)oth  a  power- 
ful and  somber  imagination  was  tinged  with  a  subtle 
fantasy  supplied  by  a  morbid  exaggeration  in  the 
senses,  which  did  not,  however,  preclude  an  intense 
and  ardent  preoccupation  with  formal  perfection. 

On  the  contrary,  these  two  modern  detraques  pre- 
sent in  their  work  a  solidity  of  construction  and  an 
absolute  rectitude  in  the  rendering  of  their  moods 
and  dreams,  that  is  scarcely  to  be  found  in  the  work 
of  even  their  best-balanced  and  sanest  contempo- 
raries. The  art  of  Baudelaire  has  been  compared  to 
that  of  Racine,  and,  in  the  same  way,  Meryon's  de- 
sign has  the  complete  economy  and  control  of  Robert 
Nanteuil  or  of  Callot.  Men  like  these  make  us  doubt 
and  reconsider  our  stock  distinctions  of  "romantic" 
and  "classic."  The  work  of  Meryon  and  of  Baude- 
laire answers  eciually  to  both  descriptions,  and  as- 
sures them  a  place  apart  in  their  generation.  Thus, 
while  their  paths  crossed  but  for  a  moment,  and  while 
they  never  shared  with  each  other  their  secret  thoughts 
and  aspirations,  there  is,  nevertheless,  no  small  in- 
terest for  the  student  in  these  slight  and  fragmentary 
records  of  what,  had  it  not  been  for  a  cruel  freak 
of  fate,  might  have  proved  an  enduring  and  fruitful 
friendship. 


II 

CHARLES    MERYON,    POET 

\;jjHE  reader  will  recall  a  project  for  collabora- 
tive tion  between  Meryon  and  Baudelaire,  pro- 
posed by  the  publisher,  Delatre.  This  came 
to  naught,  as  plans  for  the  album  containing 
the  Eaux-Fortes  sur  Paris,  for  which  Baudelaire  was 
to  write  a  prose  accompaniment,  fell  through.  But  the 
suggestion  at  least  serves  to  remind  us  that,  when  he 
originally  published  his  etchings  at  his  own  expense, 
Meryon  himself  provided  a  partial  accompaniment 
for  the  work  in  the  form  of  little  poems  which  he 
etched  on  separate  copper  plates  and  in  his  own 
handwriting.  A  few  of  the  shorter  poems  were  even 
placed  directly  upon  the  etchings  themselves,  where 
they  appear  in  one  or  more  states.  Would  Meryon  have 
discarded  these  verses  from  the  new  album,  and  were 
Baudelaire's  remarks  intended  entirely  to  supersede 
them  as  more  formal  and  edifying?  In  certain  cases 
they  had  already  been  rendered  obsolete  by  changes 
in  the  plates  which  destroyed  the  point  of  the  verses; 
or,  as  in  the  case  of  Le  Pont-Neuf  and  Le  Stryge,  they 
had  been  effaced  from  the  copper  in  later  reworkings. 
And  yet  we  know  from  Meryon 's  manuscript  notes 
entitled  Mes  Observations,  on  the  article  by  his  friend 
Philippe  Burty  in  the  Gazette  des  Beaux  A7is,  as  well 
as  from  numerous  variants  in  existing  proofs,  that  he 

18 


jirt     GJ3Toc.co**.£nco7c3 


Portrait  of  Charles  Meryon 
From  the  etching  by  F^lix  Bracquemond 
This  is  the  portrait  which  Meryon  himself  preferred 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  ■l'!4  X  3iA  inches 


devoted  no  little  time  and  attention  to  these  verses 
in  the  attempt  to  perfect  their  form  and  diction.  It 
would  thus  seem  as  if  Meryon,  at  one  period  of  his 
career  at  least,  took  his  role  of  poet  with  some  serious- 
ness. It  may  strike  one  as  remarkable  that  an  artist 
who  had  expressed  himself  so  completely  in  his  chosen 
medium  should  have  sought  another  outlet.  But 
Meryon's  mind  was  wholly  absorbed  by  his  subject- 
matter.  His  selection  of  Paris  with  its  monuments  was 
by  no  means  a  casual  one,  dictated  merely  by  a  sense 
of  the  picturesque  and  by  the  promise  of  profit  from 
such  an  undertaking.  For  him,  perhaps  more  than  for 
any  other  artist  who  has  ever  lived,  save  perhaps  the 
Russian  novelist  Dostoieffsky,  cities  had  an  inward 
significance,  a  soul.  It  was  this  that  attracted  liim  and 
that  he  strove  to  interpret  beneath  the  material  con- 
structions of  bricks  and  stone;  and  as  his  imagination 
was  of  the  intellectual,  brooding  order,  his  work  has, 
in  the  words  of  Burty,  a  jportee  philosophiqiie  which 
renders  any  successful  imitation  of  it  impossible. 

This  philosophical  intention  of  the  artist  Meryon's 
poems  tend  to  prolong  and,  in  some  instances,  to  render 
more  explicit.  Often  mere  jeux  cV esprit,  their  very  play- 
fulness touches  the  chords  of  life  and  death  with  a  kind 
of  macabre  and  ironic  humor,  stirring  an  uneasy  sense 
of  the  mystery  of  good  and  evil.  In  the  longer  and  more 
serious  poems,  the  lines  throb  with  a  passion  of  pity 
and  tenderness  for  suffering  mankind.  This  is  height- 
ened and  intensified  by  the  poet's  wistful  contemplation 
of  his  own  destiny  when,  like  a  child,  he  dreams  of  the 
future,  gazing  on  the  stars  and  seeking,  in  his  own  artless 
way,  to  solve  the  enigma  of  life  after  his  first  experience 
of  pain  and  sorrow.    A  distinct  autobiographic  interest 

19 


attaches  to  these  poems  which  not  only  mirror  his  emo- 
tional moods,  but  reflect  some  of  the  outward  vicissi- 
tudes of  his  adventurous  and  unhappy  life. 

Of  particular  interest  from  every  point  of  view 
is  the  dedication  of  Eaux-Fortes  sur  Paris  to  the 
seventeenth-century  Dutch  etcher,  Reynier  Nooms, 
better  known  as  Zeeman,  who  was  one  of  Meryon's 
most  important  masters  in  the  art  of  the  needle,  and 
several  of  whose  plates  he  carefully  copied  before 
attempting  any  original  work.  But  to  seize  the  full 
significance  of  this  dedicatory  poem  and  its  peculiar 
appropriateness  in  the  present  instance,  one  must  also 
bear  in  mind  Meryon's  own  maritime  experience  as 
an  officer  in  the  French  navy,  as  well  as  the  fact  that 
Zeeman  himself  had  etched  some  views  of  Paris  archi- 
tecture. The  reference  in  the  last  stanza  but  one 
seems  to  indicate  how  direct  was  the  influence  of  these 
upon  Meryon  in  his  style  of  treatment.  Indeed,  it 
may  very  well  be  that  Meryon  received  from  them 
not  only  the  elements  of  his  somewhat  severe  and 
graver-like  technique,  but  the  original  suggestion,  even, 
for  his'  great  undertaking. 

You  who  sailors  grave! 

Whose  callous  hand  could  capture 

In  a  kind  of  rapture, 

And  so  simply  tell 

All  that  weaves  the  spell 

Of  the  sea  and  wave. 

Let  me  tell  thee,  sire, 

How  I  do  admire 

What  subtly  shows  to  me 

The  sailor  soul  in  thee. 

In  all  3'our  work,  no  less, 
How  each  trait  doth  aver 
The  skilful  mariner 
So  simple  in  address. 
20 


OwJn.  Alt  &  «»/- 'i»^iiJ^s■ 
Srwnftdj  'ntC    oiU  0 itt. ,     &f»li'w<«.t««JL  (Bk  ten  oujWH.      ^ 


tnv  <%,  rMmouA^u-. 


3  !««>«■   wtttU'  W.  >U4 


ll  TTrt 


J  01,  ,  K.<n.  Jwr,  <iv«<j*Vt  'Til* 


X  K/?«mi«r    ^jV^&tt.t 


^4    101  il'mut    *J(U«,T, 

S)   UHtttt,  Ik   im,  i  »w»t. 
d)  tnamt  im  atlht,   »fl{i,.  i«mm/ 
€t  Vwi>ui.j   V  k«lfltl 

MeRYON.       VER^SE8    TO    Zeeman    (1854) 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  (P/s  X  2%  inches 


If  Reason  did  not  check 
My  fancy,  wont  to  roam, 
I  half  the  time  should  find 
Your  paper  wet  with  foam. 
And  then  along  the  wind 
Should  scent  the  tarry  deck. 

In  some  new  age  may  I, 
As  through  thy  waters  slipping, 
Once  more  thy  shores  descry, 
Thy  ocean  and  thy  shipping; 
That  on  the  plate  well  laid. 
With  keen  point  I  may  trace. 
By  acid's  mordant  aid. 
All,  in  my  thought's  vast  space, 
I  see  that  's  good  and  great 
In  the  salt  brine  of  the  sea; 
And  thou,  dear  captain  and  mate 
Wilt  offer  thy  hand  to  me! 

Of  this  first  work  and  new. 
Where  I  have  Paris  shown, 
—  A  ship  adorns  her  banner  — 
And  tried  to  make  my  own 
My  master's  simple  manner, 
Accept  the  homage  due! 

My  master  and  man  of  the  sea, 
Reynier,  thou  whom  I  love 
Like  another  part  of  me. 
May  I  see  thee  soon  above! 

As  a  frontispiece  for  the  Eaux-Fortes  sur  Paris, 
Meryon  presented  a  picture,  fantastically  surmounted 
by  the  figure  of  a  devil,  of  the  old  entrance  to  the 
Palais  de  Justice.  To  face  this,  he  wrote  a  short  poem 
in  the  second  etched  state  of  which  occurs  a  variant 
through  the  substitution  of  the  word  "gemisse"  for 
"rougisse,"  in  the  first  line.  I  have  incorporated  both 
readings  in  my  translation:  — 

21 


Though  pure  souls  blush  and  groan, 

For  frontispiece  I  've  shown 

This  sooty  devilkin, 

Malicious,  full  of  sin, 

Who  shadows  with  his  wings 

The  old  twin  towers  of  kings, 

Of  Paris,  pleasant  town, 

Paris,  of  fair  renown, 

Which  love  and  laughter  crown  — 

Where  science,  mighty  rede 

Of  diabolic  breed, 

Full  many  a  cub  doth  hatch 

That  Demons  claw  and  scratch! 

The  wicked  animal 

Who  brought  about  our  fall, 

Has  chosen,  far  from  well, 

In  our  good  town  to  dwell. 

The  case  is  truly  grave. 

And  sadly  I  engrave. 

Because,  to  rid  the  town. 

We  needs  must  —  tear  it  do'mi.  .  .  . 

For  the  Strijge,  the  first  capital  plate  in  the  portfoho, 
Meryon  supplied  but  the  two  following  lines,  which 
might,  however,  serve  as  a  motto  for  the  work  as  a 
whole :  — 

Lust,  a  foul  vampire,  insatiable  and  lewd, 
Fore'er  o'er  the  great  city,  covets  its  obscene  food. 

Even  this  brief  inscription,  which  was  traced  di- 
rectly beneath  the  etching,  appears  in  only  one  state. 
Yet  nothing  could  better  sum  up  the  saturnine  philos- 
ophy of  this  mystic  medieval  dreamer,  for  whom  the 
monster  thus  described  stood  as  the  symbol  of  that 
spirit  of  sin  and  suffering  which  corrupted  the  soul  of 
the  town  he  loved  and  hated  with  a  singular  intensity 
of  evil  fascination. 

The   same   sentiment   is   more   concretely  and   hu- 

22 


Meryon.     Old  Gate  of  the  Palais  de  Justice 
The  frontispiece  for  "Eaux-Fortes  sur  Paris" 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  3VL>  X  Slio  inches 


Meryox.     Le  Stryge 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  6%  X  5%  inches 


manly  expressed  in  the  verses  at  the  top  of  the  third 

state  of  La  Rue  des  Maiivais  Gargons:  — 

What  mortal  once  did  dwell 

In  such  a  dark  abode? 
Who  there  did  hide  him  well 

Where  the  sun's  rays  never  showed? 

Was  it  Virtue  here  did  stay, 

Virtue,  silent  and  poor? 
Or  Crime,  perchance  you'll  say, 

Some  vicious  evil-doer  ? 

Ah,  faith,  I  do  not  know; 

And  if  you  curious  be, 

Go  there  yourself  and  see. 
There  still  is  time  to  go  .  .  . 

The  last  line,  of  course,  contains  a  reference  to  the 
demolitions  then  in  progress  throughout  the  old  quar- 
ters of  Paris.  Among  the  many  monuments  doomed 
to  disappear  was  the  old  Pompe  Notre-Dame  on 
which  Meryon  composed  the  following  verse,  entitled 
La  Petite  Pornpe.  Set  in  a  very  clever  and  amusingly 
Bacchic  border  which  seems  to  exude  drunkenness  in 
every  line,  this  little  conceit  has  been  well  characterized 
by  one  writer  as  an  "elegant  and  witty  fantasy":  — 

You've  served  your  day, 

Lackaday! 

Poor  old  pump, 

Shorn  of  your  pomp, 

You  now  must  die! 

But  to  mollify 

This  iniquitous  decree, 

By  a  Bacchic  pleasantry, 

Why,  pump,  do  not  you, 

Quite  impromptu, 

Instead  of  water  pure. 

No  folks  can  endure, 

Pump  wine. 

Very  fine? 

23 


Not  the  destruction,  but  the  restoration,  of  the 
Pont-Neuf  produced  the  following  two  stanzas,  the 
second  with  its  whimsical,  yet  wistful,  reference,  per- 
haps to  his  own  infirmities:  — 

Of  old  Pont-Neuf  the  view 
Exactly  shown  you  see, 
All  furbished  up  anew 
By  recent  town  decree. 

Doctors,  who  know  each  ill. 
And  surgeons  full  of  skill. 
Why  not  with  flesh  and  bone, 
Deal  as  with  bridge  of  stone? 

According  to  Delteil,  these  verses  occur  only  in  the 
sixth  state  of  Le  Pont-Neuf;  l^ut  the  text,  as  he  gives 
it,  does  not  coincide  in  the  last  two  lines  with  that  of 
a  proof  in  the  New  York  Public  Library  from  which 
I  have  made  the  above  translation,  nor  does  it  make 
good  sense. 

Of  all  Meryon's  important  plates,  the  one  which  he 
worked  over  and  altered  most  in  successive  states  — 
these  number  eleven  —  is  Le  Pont-au-Change.  In  the 
second,  third,  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth,  there  appears 
in  the  upper  left-hand  corner  a  balloon  on  which  is 
inscribed  the  word  "Speranza."  This  balloon  gives 
way  in  the  seventh  to  a  flock  of  birds  which,  in  turn, 
disappear  in  the  tenth  in  favor  of  a  flight  of  small 
balloons;  while  in  the  eleventh  and  last  still  other  bal- 
loons are  added,  including  a  larger  one  which  bears, 
this  time,  the  name  of  "  (Vas)co  da  Gama,"  It  is  not 
difficult  to  see  how,  to  his  imaginative  mind  with  its 
mystical  turn  for  symbols  and  correspondences,  man's 
soaring  invention  could  become  identified  with  his  in- 
domitable readiness  to  rise,  even  from  the  depths  of 

24 


Meryon.     La  Rue  des  Mauvais  Gar<;'oxs 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  4  vs  X  3'b  inches 


ft  rfTJkU  ,  ^|i 


ri  V 


(l*tt>    n^   bcm4i0s--i*< 


O-^an    nttt--****    «r^-f*r** 

JJt4-     -VfPt  f- 


J5  1,01%-  fin 


Ul 


n 


■  -^"r^.,,,^  Ze-. 


Meryon.     La  Petite  Pompe 
Size  of  the  original  etc-hing,  41,4  X  3Vs  inches 


f;iS^^ 


Meryox.     Le  Pont-Xeuf 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  7' 4  inches  square 


despair.  To  develop  the  spiritual  significance  of  this 
analogy,  and  to  explain  the  inscription  of  the  word 
"Speranza"  on  his  first  balloon,  he  wrote  the  follow- 
ing poem  which  enables  us  to  penetrate  the  very  mood 
of  the  brain-sick:  — 

O  power  of  Hope  divine,  Balloon,  with  upward  urge, 

Like  the  pale  skiff  that  rocks  upon  the  swelling  surge. 

Stirred  by  the  careless  breath  of  Autumns  full  of  peace. 

You  float,  and  in  the  mists,  set  swirling  by  the  breeze, 

Reveal  yourself  sometimes  unto  our  eager  eyes, 

In  the  calm  tracts  of  space,  on  the  blue  ground  of  the  skies, 

Where  the  life-giving  rays  of  a  bright  sim  that  gleams, 

A  line  of  gold  do  trace  below  the  brilliant  dreams 

Of  doubtful  days  to  come;  descend  and  build  anew 

The  courage,  sorely  tried,  of  the  rude  and  storm-tossed  crew; 

Of  warriors  stern  and  bold,  who  for  a  better  fate. 

Before  the  press  of  foes,  still  bear  themselves  elate, 

Of  wounded,  broken  hearts,  who  seek  o'er  earth  in  vain 

The  unknown  joy  they  scent,  and  hunger  to  attain! 

But,  moody  dreamer,  why,  when  pictures  are  thy  trade. 

Wilt  thou  among  the  clouds  forever  promenade? 

Descend,  descend  to  earth,  and  do  no  longer  try 

To  climb  the  paths  too  steep,  that  lead  up  through  the  sky. 

Fear  thou  of  Fate  to  tempt  the  wayward  fantasy. 

For  never  unto  men  is  she  with  favors  free. 

And  since  you  hold  the  point,  through  fortune's  latest  freak. 

That  makes  a  needy  etcher  of  the  sailor  far  too  weak, 

So  work  that  on  the  copper,  black-glazed,  that  you  must  hollow. 

Your  hand  will  leave  behind  the  ripple  that  should  follow 

Each  feeble  skiff  that  passes  upon  the  stormy  sea 

That  men  call  life,  whose  waters  both  harsh  and  bitter  be. 

Where  oft,  too  oft,  alas,  the  lying  hope  that  bore 

Us  on  with  siren  lure  deserts  us  at  the  shore! 

If  the  foregoing,  with  its  note  of  pensive  self-con- 
nnmion,  is  the  most  personal  and  poignant  of  all 
the;  poems,  L'Hotellerie  de  la  Mort  is  the  most  pow- 
erful and  passionate.  Written  to  accompany  La 
Morgue,  it  completes  the  purpose  of  that  etching  by 
carrying  the  eye  beyond  the  grim  walls  of  the  "inn  of 

25 


death"  to  the  soul  of  the  sinister  tragedy  within.  In 
it  a  sense  of  profoundest  pity  struggles  with  the  never- 
failing  ironic  perception  of  the  artist,  in  a  strange 
atmosphere  of  imaginative  fantasy,  to  produce  an 
agonized  and  heart-rending  cry  of  revolt  against  the 
mysterious  principle  of  suffering  that  pervades  the 
universe.  Peace  and  a  promise  of  felicity  are  found 
at  last  in  an  influx  of  that  peculiar  mystical  sentiment 
and  insight  which  would  seem  to  have  its  source  in 
German  romanticism:  — 

Come,  view,  ye  passersby. 
Where  her  poor  children  lie; 
A  mother  charitable, 
This  Paris  that  you  see. 
To  them,  at  all  times  free, 
Gives  both  a  bed  and  table.  .  .  . 

See,  without  turning  pale, 
These  faces  that  show  naught, 
Some  smiling,  some  distraught. 
The  future's  mystic  tale.  .  .  . 

Here  Death  herds  all  the  drove 
Of  those  whom  Fate  waylays 
Upon  the  stony  ways, 
Through  Envy,  Want,  and  Love.  . 

W^hen  upon  Paris  breaks 
The  pitiless  hue  and  cry, 
Satan  himself  then  quakes. 
So  full  the  tables  lie.  .  .  . 

Ah,  may  thou  ne'er  be  shown 
On  this  black  bier  of  stone. 
Of  some  one  dear  to  thee, 
The  awful  effigy!  .  .  . 

Oh,  passers,  passers,  pray 
For  all  who  pass  this  way, 

26 


Mehyon.     La  Morgue 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  QVs  X  Si's  inches 


And  down  to  death  are  hurled 
Forever,  without  measure, 
By  this  great  haunt  of  pleasure, 
Here  in  this  famous  world! 

And  yet,  Death,  may  it  not, 
'Neath  the  stern  mask  we  see, 
Hide,  of  man's  final  lot. 
Some  smiling  mystery? 

Who  knows  if,  C!rief  and  Pain 

Drawing  aside  their  screen, 

At  the  end  of  toil  and  strain. 

The  star  may  not  be  seen? 

Then  on,  poor  human  bands. 

Dig  and  delve  in  the  earth. 

With  your  feet  and  with  your  hands. 

For  there  is  due  to  dearth 

Some  black  bread  every  day! 

If  under  famine's  flail, 

With  night  still  on  the  way. 

Your  forces  growing  frail. 

And  stricken  with  dismay. 

Upon  the  road  are  spent ; 

If  you  envisage  Death, 

WHiom  God  perchance  doth  send, 

Then,  with  your  latest  breath, 

Wiping  away  your  tears, 

Glance  at  the  vaulted  skies, 

Where  cease  for  aye  men's  fears. 

Lift  up  again  your  eyes! 

There  you  perchance  will  read 

That  for  you  now  draws  nigh 

The  sweet  days  of  no  need. 

When,  never  more  to  die, 

The  flower  shall  unfold. 

The  flower  with  fresh  corol, 

\^'ith  the  holy  aureole, 

Of  blessings  manifold. 

Whose  germ  all  hearts  do  hold! 

Equally  characteristic,  in  a  certain  note  of  sardonic 
humor,  is  the  little  piece  of  six  lines  which  Meryon 
affixed  to  L'Abside  de  Notre-Dame:  — 

27 


O  you  who  subtly  relish  each  bit  of  Gothic  style, 

Then  view  you  here,  of  Paris,  the  noble  churchly  pile: 

High  they  have  wished  to  build  it,  our  great  and  saintly  kings, 

To  give,  unto  their  master,  their  deep  repentance  wings. 

Although  it  is  so  large,  alas,  they  call  it  now  too  small, 

Of  those  who  fashionably  sin,  for  it  to  hold  them  all! 

This  completes  the  first  Paris  series  on  the  literary 
side,  nor  are  there  any  poems  for  the  later  Paris  pic- 
tures, except  one  of  little  interest  for  Le  Bain-Froid 
Chevrier,  which  appears  in  the  proofs  with  letters. 
Unlike  the  others,  this  is  engraved  on  the  plate  in  Ro- 
man characters  instead  of  being  etched  in  the  artist's 
own  handwriting,  which  is,  perhaps,  one  reason  why 
it  seems  less  personal  and  more  perfunctory.  Worthier 
of  translation  is  the  little  set  of  verses  which  Meryon 
inscribed  in  a  portfolio  of  the  Eaux-Fortes  sur  Paris 
sent,  in  1854,  to  his  friend,  Eugene  Blery,  who  taught 
him  how  to  etch :  — 

Blery,  to  you,  my  guide. 
Who  first  for  me  untied 
Of  art,  your  secret  way; 
Who  did,  without  delay. 
Of  your  high-burning  soul. 
The  mirror  bright  unveil; 
My  Muse,  fresh  for  the  goal. 
Of  what  it  hath,  though  frail, 
Would  make  an  offering. 
In  graving  here  your  name 
Within  the  frontis  frame 
Of  this  small  gift  of  hers  — 
Though  what  stirs  in  her  heart 
But  feebly  it  avers  — 
The  first  fruits  of  her  art. 

Had  Meryon  ever  carried  out  his  scheme  for  a  port- 
folio of  prints  illustrative  of  his  travels  in  the  South 
Seas,  he  might  have  written  a  number  of  poems  to  ac- 

28 


r\lERYOX.       Le    PlLOTE    DE    TONGA    (1801) 

This  song,  composed  in  prose,  after  the  manner  of  the  inhabitants  of  New 
Zealand,  was  intended  as  a  preface  to  a  series  of  souvenirs  of  the  voyage  of 
the  corvet  Rhin,  which  Meryon  intended  to  illustrate. 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  8  X  S** i  inches 


company  them.  As  it  is,  we  have  only  one  inspired  by 
this  subject  and  by  this  episode  in  his  hfe.  It  is  un- 
rhymed  and  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  prose  poem.  "I  did 
not  make  this  Httlc  piece  as  a  song,"  wrote  Meryon 
in  Mes  Observations,  "though  it  doubtless  contains 
the  material  for  one,  according  to  the  custom  of  the 
Islanders."  It  reminds  one  of  similar  little  pictures, 
simple  and  rhythmic  in  line  and  glowing  with  light 
and  color,  presented  by  that  other  great  artist  who 
visited  the  South  Seas  and  who  has  left  a  literary  as 
well  as  an  artistic  record  of  his  impressions  —  the  late 
John  La  Farge.  The  text  of  Mcryon's  graceful  and 
spirited  composition  is  printed  in  red,  and  is  sur- 
rounded with  a  frame  of  Polynesian  ornament.  It  is 
entitled 

LE   PILOTE   DE   TONGA 

We  sailed  from  Tonga  on  a  ship  of  war; 
now  comes  the  Pilot  in  his  frail  pirogue. 

He  is  nearly  nude.  Agile  and  strong,  with 
one  leap  he  is  on  board;  he  goes  straight  to 
the  commander  and  greets  him  with  a  cour- 
teous salute. 

Tlie  ship  spreads  her  sails  to  the  winds; 
swiftly  sped  by  the  breeze  that  swells  them, 
she  enters 

the  narrow  and  dangerous  strait. 

Standing  on  the  quarter-deck,  his  head  held 
high  and  his  eye  alert,  the  skilful  pilot  shows 
with  a  gesture  the  course  of  the  ship  which 
runs  gaily  among  the  reefs!  His  is  the  noble 
attitude  of  the  Sylvan.  Everything  about  him 
denotes  assurance.  His  broad  bosom,  of  tawny 
hue,  gleams  in  the  sunlight  like  a  bronze 
buckler.   His  long  locks  float  in  the  wind. 


On  board  all  is  still.  Officers  and  sailors 
admire  him  in  silence, 

And  the  ship  sails  on,  and  on,  and  on. 

But  the  channel  broadens.  At  length  the 
surge  of  the  open  sea  sounds  beneath  the 
prow. 

Hurrah!  valiant  pilot!  hurrah! 

The  strait  is  pas.sed! 

Pursue  thy  course,  O  noble  ship;  before  us  opens  now 

The  Ocean! 

And  to  thee.  Pilot  of  Tonga,  thanks! 

Very  different  from  this  purely  descriptive  and 
decorative  composition  is  the  last  of  Meryon's  met- 
rical compositions,  UAttelage,  with  its  dramatic 
form  and  its  profound  sense  of  the  misery  of  life  for 
the  humble.  Like  the  other  poems,  it  is  in  his  own 
handwriting,  and  it  has  a  decorative  initial  in  the 
shape  of  a  summary  but  suggestive  sketch  of  a  bit  of 
dreary  landscape  that  accentuates  the  moral  atmos- 
phere of  the  poem  itself :  — ■ 

A  horse  crawled  on  his  way,  sad,  and  with  hanging  head, 

For  he  was  old  and  thin,  and  powdered  o'er  with  dust. 

Behind  him,  as  he  went,  a  pensive  yokel  led 

An  ancient  plow  that  creaked,  unoiled,  and  worn  with  rust. 

The  man  was  spare  and  bent,  by  age,  so  it  did  seem. 

And  I  felt  deepest  pity  for  this  unhappy  team. 

And  that  I  might  console  them,  when  as  I  came  in  reach, 

'O  weary  slaves,'  to  both  I  thus  began  my  speech, 

'You  will  have  rest  at  evening,  when  you  are  growing  old.'  .   .   . 

—  I  had  not  finished  speaking,  when  both  at  once,  decisive: 

'We  hope  for  nothing  ever:  for  us,  no  mirth  will  hold 

'The  future  years  derisive. 

'For  we  are  of  the  race  foredoomed  from  birth  to  toil. 

'Poor  man,  poor  animal, 

'  Both  with  our  burdens  shall 

'  Go  turning  up  the  soil, 

30 


^X^'ottel 


^"- 


^_,  .,    ^auwbaM  rattoAtU  ,-6in^  '^"l''    '  ^*"^  ^'^  *'^ 

„     *^/ V^tiirv  ,-W>vA  it-'otttialjirnj  \«»«^  ,  ivAruu^  (Mu<^  iif-few«^  , 

"jO   aubu^     (tut-  Tuxt*     ck -nu»-'>u;)'<cnih 

(5Du0Kl>i*A    -M/nA  ,  'IWTV  T-ujrtvt-U/Ut;  ,  r.ilai>    av^ 'Jit  ^vo^^  -y-nX/vbu 

Merton.     L'Attelage 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  5%X  3^4  inches 


'With  sweat,  in  summer's  heat. 

'For  what  our  lord  inherits,  't  is  ours  to  cause  to  swell 

'And  make  the  oats  grow  well 

'That  other  mouths  shall  eat.* 

—  'T  is  true,  I  mused,  for  them  their  weariness  is  vain ; 

Their  labor  and  their  sweat,  their  lonjo;  hours  and  their  pain, 

Do  bring  them  no  return;  ah!  it  is  truly  taught, 

That  certain  men,  too  many,  more  than  in  justice  ought, 

In  this  life  suffer  all,  and  what  the  generous  fee 

For  all  their  thankless  toil?  —  Death  —  so  it  seems  to  me  .  .  . 

Other  pieces  written  by  Meryon,  and  either  etched 
or  engraved  on  copper,  have  a  curious  rather  than  a 
Hterary  interest.  Thus  Petit  Prince  Ditto  is  a  poHt- 
ical  pasquinade  on  the  Prince  Imperial  and  con- 
tains a  scurrilous  reference  to  his  reputed  origin.  The 
two  plates  entitled  respectively  La  Loi  Lunaire  and  La 
Loi  Solaire  are,  as  Burty  calls  them,  philosophical 
fantasies  based  upon  a  system  of  absolute  morality. 
The  first,  in  particular,  both  in  the  order  of  its  ideas 
and  in  the  symbolic  style  of  its  decoration,  reminds 
one  somewhat  of  Blake,  between  whom  and  Meryon 
there  are  certain  points  of  resemblance  both  in  tem- 
perament and  in  intellectual  organization.  Through 
the  latter,  with  his  powerful  objective  vision,  there  runs 
a  vein  of  unmistakable  mystic  sentiment  and  percep- 
tion. True  mystics  have  always  been  thus  endowed, 
and  it  may  even  be  said  that  the  primary  basis  of 
mysticism  is  a  firm  grasp  upon  the  ordinary  realities 
of  life.  It  is  from  this  ground,  and  not  fiom  any  vague 
indistinctness,  or  any  absolute  denial  of  the  senses, 
that  the  mystic  worthy  of  the  name  soars  to  his  trans- 
cendent interpretation  of  life  as  a  whole. 

Seen  aright,  each  of  Meryon's  plates  is  such  an 
interpretation,    and  his  poems  aid  us  to  understand 

31 


them  in  such  a  sense.  But  their  function  is  not  merely 
interpretative.  They  have,  in  adtUtion,  an  intrinsic 
Hterary  value  of  their  own.  They  possess  sincerity 
and  depth  of  feeling,  and,  in  the  matter  of  expression, 
a  certain  blunt  and  homely  directness  that  I  have  en- 
deavored to  preserve  in  my  renderings,  even  at  the 
expense  of  smoothness.  They  are,  moreover,  entirely 
original, — so  much  so,  indeed,  that  Meryon  has  all 
the  air  of  having  actually  invented  poetry  for  his  own 
peculiar  purposes,  as  he  invented  his  simple  yet  strik- 
ingly decorative  way  of  presenting  it. 

And  yet  these  original  and  naive  verses,  so  evi- 
dently the  work  of  a  hand  quite  unpracticed  in  the 
art  of  poetry,  of  a  mind  of  no  particular  literary  cul- 
ture —  of  a  medieval  ballad-mind,  if  I  may  be  allowed 
the  expression  —  have  their  affinities  with  other  poetry. 
As  I  have  faithfully  turned  his  French  alexandrines 
into  their  precise  equivalent,  his  quaint  homeliness  re- 
minds me  of  more  than  one  elder  English  poet  —  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt,  Nicholas  Grimald,  Michael  Drayton  — 
who  tried  to  give  Renaissance  form  to  this,  our  tradi- 
tional ballad  measure.  But  in  mood  and  intellectual 
content,  it  is  to  the  great  poets  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury that  he  is  most  akin.  Thus,  in  the  pensive  pes- 
simism of  the  wistful  searcher  of  the  skies,  we  seem 
to  listen  to  a  less  convinced  and  more  mystical  Leo- 
pardi;  in  UHotellerie  de  la  Mort  there  is  a  hint  of 
Hood's  humanitarian  sentiment  and  social  invective; 
in  L'Attelage  sounds  the  same  outraged  sense  of  the 
dignity  of  human  labor,  and  even  of  the  moral  claims 
of  animal  life,  that  penetrates  modern  poetical  expres- 
sion from  Burns  to  Baudelaire;^  while,  in  Meryon's 

^  This  poem,  however,  presents  an  even  more  remarkable  parallel 

32 


frequent  bizarrerie  of  diction,  his  imaginative  fantasy, 
and  his  fondness  for  the  occult  and  the  abstract  — 
his  metaphysical  note,  in  short  —  we  recognize  that 
he  is  brother  to  Poe  and  a  forerunner  of  the  Symbolistes. 
Thus,  also,  they  have  their  value  as  a  gloss  on  the 
moral  and  spiritual  evolution  of  the  age,  these  little 
poems  which,  finally,  thrill  us  as  the  product  of  the 
same  mind  which  imagined  the  austere,  grandiose,  and 
mystical  visions  of  the  Eaux-Fortes  s^ir  Paris,  and  of 
the  hand  which  graved  these  on  the  copper  with  such 
restrained  ardor  of  execution. 

with  that  famous  production  of  fourteenth-century,  or  Middle- 
Enghsh,  Htorature,  "  The  Vision  of  Piers  the  Ploughman."  Not  only 
the  spirit,  but  the  very  language,  of  Meryon's  piece  is  found  in  such  a 
passage  as  the  following  from  Miss  Jessie  L.  Weston's  admirable  ren- 
dering into  modern    English  in  "Romance,  Vision,   and  Satire":  — 

"  Some  set  them  to  the  plough-share,  and  seldom  thought  of  play. 
In  harrowing  and  sowing  they  gain,  laboriously, 
What  many  of  their  masters  destroy  in  gluttony." 


Ill 

MAXIME    LALAlSls^E 

'NTRODUCED  into  France  by  the  "Men  of 
1830"  as  a  phase  of  the  revival  of  land- 
scape art  and  as  an  intimate  instrument  of 
self-expression,  modern  painter-etching 
dates  its  decline  in  that  country  from  about  1860, 
when  it  began  to  become  popular.  It  is  not  without 
significance  that  Lalanne's  first  plate,  the  Rue  des 
Marmousets,  should  have  been  published  the  same  year 
—1862— as  a  little  article  with  the  suggestive  title, 
"L'Eau-forte  est  a  la  mode,"  which  Baudelaire  con- 
tributed anonymously  to  the  Revua  anecdotique.  For, 
if  Jacque  was,  as  he  is  commonly  regarded,  the  pioneer 
of  the  movement,  the  distinguished  Bordelais,  who  was 
decorated  for  his  work  by  the  King  of  Portugal— 
critics  and  biographers  have  seemed  to  attach  an  ironic 
importance  to  this  unique  recognition— may  be  said 
to  have  brought  it  to  a  close.  Bracquemond  and 
Jacque  continued  productive  long  after  1860,  but  La- 
lanne  was  the  last  considerable  new  talent  to  appear. 
After  him  comes  Buhot.  This  clever  artist,  however, 
stands  alone,  remote  from  any  tradition,  and  his  dis- 
dain for  all  restraints  arising  from  the  nature  of  his 
medium,  marks  in  him  the  decadence  of  etching  as  a 
distinct  style. 


K    j^ 


oj  3 


3  a; 

a.£; 


^=3 


Sfl 


l2  oi 


i3  j 


■^J3  o 


This  is  by  no  means  the  case  with  Lalanne.  Pos- 
sessed of  scarcely  less  skill  than  Buhot,  he  canalized  his 
cleverness,  and  confined  his  virtuosity  to  overcoming 
the  difficulties  involved  in  a  strict  adherence  to  certain 
fixed  rules  of  procedure.  That  his  work  gained  by 
this  rigid  discipline  of  taste  is  unquestionable.  To  it 
must  be  attributed  the  combined  strength  and  delicacy 
of  a  style  which,  more  than  that  of  any  other  French 
etcher,  keeps  the  freedom,  vigor,  and  directness  of  the 
Dutch  masters,  and  unites  with  these  qualities  the 
elegance  and  lucidity  of  the  Gallic  temperament.  Al- 
though trained  in  the  use  of  the  fusain,  Lalanne  never 
was  seduced  by  love  of  depth  and  richness  of  tone  into 
abandoning,  or  even  modifying,  the  pure  linear  tech- 
nique which  is  the  basic  principle  of  the  art  of  the 
needle.  In  this  he  may  be  contrasted  with  another 
advocate  of  pure  line— Haden— who,  however,  in  his 
frequent  use  of  drj^-point,  not  less  than  in  his  experi- 
ments late  in  life  with  mezzotint,  betrays  a  distinctly 
national  bias  toward  what  is,  perhaps,  the  most  char- 
acteristic mode  of  English  l)lack-and-white  art.  In 
two  plates,  Lcs  Bords  de  la  Tamise  and  Bichmond, 
which,  perversely  enough,  although  by  no  means  in  his 
most  interesting  manner,  are  given  by  many  critics 
almost  the  highest  rank  among  his  works,  Lalanne 
emulated  Haden  in  a  certain  tenderness  of  sentimen- 
tal and  atmospheric  suggestion.  But  he  never  sought 
to  secure  his  rich  effects  of  light  and  shade,  or  his  bril- 
liant tonal  contrasts. 

There  was  nothing  sensuous  in  the  temperament  of 
Lalanne,  which  may  rather  be  described  as  spirit uel. 
"Amusant  et  piquant,"  is  the  way  Beraldi  describes 
his  method,  and  these  two  words  accurately  indicate 

35 


a  mental  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  artist  toward  his 
material.  At  the  root  of  his  inspiration  lay  a  habit  of 
analysis  which  made  him  see  line  where  another  would 
see  mass,  and  seek  to  reduce  expression  to  the  simplest 
and  most  logical  terras  in  that  medium.  Even  his  sen- 
timent partakes  of  this  abstract  intellectual  character, 
and  is  stirred  in  him  by  the  grace  of  a  curve,  the  caress 
of  a  contour,  rather  than  by  any  deeper  appeal  to  the 
emotions.  Sensibility  of  this  sort  occasionally  weakens 
his  work,  as  in  the  two  popular  plates,  Aux  Environs 
de  Paris  and  Le  Canal  a  Pont-Sainte-Maxence,  through 
the  excessive  attenuation  of  natural  forms  to  which  it 
leads.  But  it  never  produces  vagueness  or  obscurity. 
On  the  contrary,  clarity  is  a  distinguishing  trait  of 
Lalanne's  style.  No  one  has  ever  been  able  to  express 
himself  more  clearly,  fluently,  or  concisely  in  the 
medium  of  etching.  He  apparently  never  experienced 
the  slightest  difficulty  in  saying  precisely  what  he 
wished  and  in  selecting  the  precise  way  in  which  to 
say  it.  Seldom,  in  his  best  plates,  is  there  a  stroke  that 
is  not  essential ;  and  in  many  of  his  sketches,  where  he 
employs  a  free  line  remarkable  alike  for  the  brevity 
of  its  indications,  the  clearness  of  its  evocative  power, 
and  the  negligent  nonchaloir  of  its  flowing  loops  and 
lacets,  he  reveals  a  faculty  for  generalization  that  is 
amazing. 

There  is  no  better  example  of  this  witty  laconism  of 
style  than  the  Rue  des  Marmousets.  Although  it  is  his 
first  plate,  it  exhibits  a  maturity  of  method  that  would 
never  lead  one  to  suspect  that  it  was  the  work  of  a  be- 
ginner. There  is  original  creative  power  in  the  simple 
solidity  of  his  architectural  constructions,  in  the  effec- 
tive distribution  and  biting  of  his  relatively  few  lines, 

36 


-.w 


ffi      -S 


Lalanne.     Rue  des  Marmousets 

"C'est  de  toms  imm6morial,  que  le  bruit  a  couru  qu'il  y  avoit  en  la  Cit6  de 
Paris,  riie  dcs  Marmousets,  un  patissier  meurtrier,  lequel  ayant  occis  en  sa 
inaison  un  homme,  ayd6  a  ce  par  un  sien  voisin  barbier,  faignant  raser  la 
barbe:  de  la  chair  d'iceluifaisit  des  pastez  qui  se  trouvoient  nieilleurs  que  les 
aultres,  d'autant  que  la  chair  de  I'homme  est  plus  d61icate,  a  cause  de  la 
nourriture,  que  celle  des  aultres  aniniaux." 

P.  Jacques  du  Breul,  Le  Thedtre  des  Antiquitis  de  Paris  (1612). 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  9Vo  X  6';s  inches 


and  in  his  ability  to  evoke  the  genius  loci  of  the  grisly 
pastrycook's  sinister  shop.  Meryon  may  have  sug- 
gested the  subject,  but  his  influence  did  not  extend  to 
the  style  of  treatment.  The  technique  is  Lalanne's 
own.  It  is  more  modern  than  ]\Ieryon's,  and  it  is 
akin  to  Whistler's,  rather  than  to  that  of  the  classic 
school  whence  ]\Ieryon  derived  his  initial  inspiration. 
The  latter,  though  romantic  in  spirit,  was  classic  in 
form.  Lalanne,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  true  impres- 
sionist ;  and  as  etching  is  essentially  an  impressionistic 
art,  Lalanne  may  even  be  said,  in  this  sense,  to  be  the 
superior  of  jMeryon,  whose  art  tended  to  merge  in  that 
of  line-engraving. 

The  differences  between  the  two  men  are  well  exem- 
plified in  their  ways  of  working.  IMeryon  made  tiny 
pencil  sketches  of  the  parts  of  his  composition  which 
he  afterward  assembled  on  the  plate.  Lalanne, 
sketching  for  the  most  part  directly  on  the  copper, 
made  each  successive  plate  a  leaf  in  a  vast  note-book. 
What  he  thus  lost  through  the  absence  of  reflection  and 
deliberate  design,  he  gained  in  spontaneity  and  in  live- 
liness of  execution.  Still,  charming  as  it  is,  much  of 
his  work  seems  somehow  trivial  and  deficient.  One 
cannot  look  through  the  eight  fat  portfolios  that  con- 
tain the  complete  collection  of  it  in  the  New  York 
Public  Library,  without  receiving  an  impression  of 
monotony,  and  even,  it  must  be  said,  mediocrity.  La- 
lanne traveled  much,  and  thus  shows  no  lack  of  va- 
riety in  his  subject-matter;  but  his  motives  are  few, 
casual,  and  constantly  repeated.  Nor  does  this  repeti- 
tion lead  in  the  end  to  any  greater  depth  of  penetra- 
tion—to the  consecutive  "conquest"  of  nature.  His 
prolific  output  is  not  due  to  any  deep  passion,  as  in  the 

37 


case  of  Claude  Lorrain,  to  wrest  from  Nature  her  in- 
most secrets,  but  rather,  one  feels,  to  a  simple  taste  for 
the  picturesque,  and  also  to  a  love  of  etching  for  its 
own  sake— a  sheer  physical  delight  in  the  manipula- 
tion of  the  needle. 

Lalanne  was  neither  a  thinker  nor  a  poet,  he  had 
neither  deep  personal  emotion,  exalted  imaginative 
vision,  nor  consuming  scientific  curiosity.  His  voca- 
tion as  an  artist  was  a  vocation  of  hand  and  eye  rather 
than  of  heart  and  brain.  ' '  Hugo,  if  you  do  not  see  his 
rock  of  Guernsey,  loses  something  of  his  elevation," 
writes  jMauriee  Barres  in  an  attempt  to  prove  that  the 
personality  of  the  lyric  poet  is  the  necessary  comple- 
ment of  his  expression.  Yet  it  is  possible  to  view  the 
pedestal,  and  even  then  to  miss  the  greatness  of  the 
statue.  This  is  undeniably  the  case  with  Lalanne,  who 
visited  Hugo  in  his  exile,  and  made  a  series  of  fifteen 
plates  portraying  the  poet  and  his  domain.  The 
Hugo  of  these  pictures  scarcely  forecasts  in  prestige 
and  grandeur  the  old  man,  the  first  sight  of  whom, 
talking  w4th  Leconte  de  Lisle  in  the  library  of  the 
Senate,  so  filled  the  young  Barres  with  emotion.  He 
is  merely  a  middle-aged  Frenchman  of  some  political 
importance,  en  villegiature,  where  he  has  been  visited 
by  an  inquisitive  artist  of  the  Paris  press. 

Instances  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely  to  illus- 
trate this  moral  and  imaginative  deficiency  in  La- 
lanne, which  has  been  by  no  means  overlooked  by 
critics.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  it,  Lalanne  holds  a  dis- 
tinct place  of  his  own  among  French  painter-etchers 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Others  employed  the  point 
more  penetratingly  in  their  search  for  the  truth  of 
nature  and  of  their  own  souls.     Still  others  reared 

38 


t3  4> 


.  *»  if^l^f    <       ^*" 


E-S.S 


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w     ^  "    „ 


with  it  edifices  more  massive  and  moods  more  imagina- 
tive, but  no  one  else  has  used  it  so  cursively,  with  such 
literary  grace  and  facility,  or  developed  a  style  so 
accomplished  and  idiomatic.  Nor  is  this  all.  If  Me- 
ryon  had  more  of  the  classic  severity  of  form,  Lalanne 
had  more  of  the  classic  serenity  of  spirit.  In  many 
of  his  landscapes  there  is  a  tranquil  charm,  a  gentle 
pensiveness  of  mood,  which  humanizes,  as  it  were,  the 
aspects  of  nature.  Perhaps  the  finest,  because  most 
deeply  felt,  of  the  pure  landscapes  is  the  plate  entitled 
Bordeaux,  Vue  de  Cenon,  which  has  a  note  of  nobility 
in  its  composition  and  in  its  wide  sweep  of  sky  and 
steepled  plain.  ]\Iore  intimate  and  familiar,  with  a 
touch  of  rustic  grace  and  idyllic  freshness,  are  the 
views  in  the  neighborhood  of  Nogent— the  home  of 
Flaubert's  Frederic  Moreau.  Doubtless  it  was  as  La- 
lanne pictured  them,  that  Barres  felt  his  desire  drawn 
l)y  the  canals  and  meadows  of  this  Seine  country  on 
his  "Voyage  de  Sparte";  and  these  little  etchings,  so 
filled  with  a  sense  of  tender  playfulness  in  their  exe- 
cution, may  well  help  us  to  understand  something  of 
the  Frenchman's  nostalgia  for  his  native  soil. 

Even  more  than  to  nature,  Lalanne  was  attracted  to 
cities,  and  in  his  views  of  Paris  and  Bordeaux  there  is 
a  simple,  intuitive  apprehension  of  the  scene  as  a 
whole— the  way  a  child  sees  things— which  lifts 
familiar  sights,  and  constructions  of  brick  and  stone, 
as  completely  out  of  the  commonplace  of  every-day,  as 
does  IMeryon's  somber  vision.  Thus,  in  his  temper  no 
less  than  in  certain  incompletely  realized  pictorial 
intentions,  and  in  that  preference  for  humanized 
aspects  of  landscape  which  sets  him  apart  from  the 
Barbizon  artists,  he  has  affinities  with  the  school  of 

39 


Claude,  to  whom  his  friends  rather  indiscreetly  com- 
pared him  in  his  lifetime.  "I  shall  not  speak  of  you 
.  .  .  nor  of  your  etchings,  in  which  the  style  of 
Claude  is  so  well  united  to  the  grace  of  Karel  Dujar- 
din, "  Avrote  Charles  Blanc  in  a  letter  to  Lalanne 
M'hich  is  printed  in  the  English  translation  of  the  lat- 
ter 's  treatise  on  etching,  the  standard  text-book  on  this 
subject.  He  lacks  the  sustained  seriousness  and  ele- 
vation of  the  master,  but  he  has  something  of  the 
charm  of  the  disciple.  He  has  also  certain  definite 
artistic  achievements  to  his  credit.  Who,  for  ex- 
ample, has  ever  condensed  a  greater  sense  of  space 
into  small  compass,  or  introduced  such  multiplic- 
ity of  detail  without  confusion  or  dispersal  of  in- 
terest, as  Lalanne,  in  his  Qiiai  dcs  Chartrons  a  Bor- 
deaux? Who  has  rendered  the  long,  dazzling  reaches 
of  seashore  with  so  few  lines,  and  with  so  much  magic 
of  atmosphere  and  perspective,  as  Lalanne  in  his  etch- 
ings of  the  Norman  coast — Villers,  Dives,  Benzeval, 
Calvados?  His  masterpieces  are  not  many,  but  few 
etchers  have  produced  so  many  plates  on  a  sustained 
level  of  excellence;  and  if  from  these  there  could  be 
eliminated  the  inferior  work  which  for  one  reason  or 
another  he  also  produced,  the  etchings  which  remain 
would  surprise  more  than  one  critic  and  collector  who 
now  is  disposed  to  dismiss  Lalanne  as  a  facile  manu- 
facturer of  pretty  plates  "easily  comprehended  of 
the  people." 


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IV 

SOME    FKEXCII    ETCHERS    AND 
SONNETEERS 

RITING  in  1802  of  that  revival  of  etching 
which  his  own  appreciation  of  Meryon  and 
other  contemporary  etchers  did  so  much  to 
promote,  Charles  Baudelaire  expressed  his 
belief  that  this  art  w^ould  never  become  really  popular, 
although  he  admitted  that  he  might  be  a  bad  prophet 
and  hoped  that  he  would  prove  so.  Time,  however,  has 
fully  justified  his  vaticination,  and  to-day  it  is  more 
clearly  understood  than  ever  before,  that  the  personal, 
and  therefore  aristocratic,  element,  which  the  French 
poet  and  connoisseur  correctly  felt  to  be  of  the  very 
essence  of  etching,  must  of  necessity  limit  its  appeal 
and  forever  keep  it  the  favored  medium  of  the  few 
rather  than  of  the  many.  Yet,  at  the  precise  moment, 
any  one  less  perspicacious  than  he  might  well  have  been 
pardoned  for  a  far  more  optimistic  outlook.  Never,  in  all 
its  history  had  etching  appeared  more  likely  to  achieve 
popularity  than  when  Baudelaire  was  writing  his  little 
articles,  Peintres  et  Aqua-fortistes,  and  L'Eau-forte  est  a 
la  mode.  As  the  latter  title  indicates,  the  art  of  the 
needle  had  already  become  the  vogue  among  the  more 
cultured  classes  of  Parisian  society,  and  this  tended  to 


increase  rather  than  to  diminish  during  the  remaining 
years  of  the  decade.  The  ranks  of  the  etchers  were 
rapidly  swelled  with  new  recruits  as  eminent  painters 
and  humble  illustrators  alike  experimented  with  the 
needle,  while  teachers  like  Lalanne  and  Gaucherel 
turned  out  clever  students  from  their  well-attended 
classes. 

But  the  public  demand  for  prints  kept  pace  with  the 
supply,  and  in  order  to  meet  it  more  directly,  Cadart, 
who  had  founded  the  French  Etching  Club  on  the  model 
of  the  Society  of  English  Etchers,  started  a  periodical  of 
his  own,  to  which  the  majority  of  the  leading  etchers 
of  the  time  contributed.  Even  his  catalogues  were  care- 
fully arranged  little  works  of  art,  embellished  with 
miniature  masterpieces  by  Veyrassat  and  other  popular 
favorites.  Nor  was  this  all.  Etching  very  largely  took 
the  place  of  lithography  for  the  production  of  views  of 
contemporary  historical  events.  So  that,  just  as  Raffet 
drew  upon  the  stone  the  incidents  of  his  martial  epic, 
of  which  the  glory  of  the  French  arms  was  the  theme, 
Lalanne  bit  upon  the  copperplate  scenes  connected  with 
their  tragic  humiliation  and  defeat  in  the  Siege  of  Paris. 
It  even  competed  with  wood-engraving  as  an  illustra- 
tive medium  for  books  and  magazines;  and  for  many 
years  —  or  until  the  photogravure  process  came  to  take 
its  place  for  intaglio  impressions  —  no  pretentious  de 
luxe  volume  was  complete  without  a  series  of  eaux- 
fortes  by  some  eminent  etcher  or  group  of  etchers. 

Of  such  works  the  most  interesting  to  students  of  the 
modern  revival  of  etching,  especially  if  they  are  also 
somewhat  familiar  with  the  literary  history  of  the  period 
in  France,  is  perhaps  Sonnets  et  Eaux-fortes.^  Baudelaire 

1  Sonnets  et  Eaux-fortes,  mdccclxix.  Alphonse  Lemerre,  fiditeur. 
42 


had  already  pointed  out  the  special  appeal  of  the 
medium  to  the  man  of  letters ;  and  doubtless  this  sump- 
tuous volume,  which  was  published  in  Paris  in  1869, 
and  which  aimed  to  bring  together  as  author  and  illus- 
trator all  the  principal  poets  and  etchers  of  the  period 
—  including  a  few  foreign  artists  of  distinction  —  was 
more  or  less  directly  inspired  by  his  dictum.  Forty- 
two  poets  and  etchers  cooperated  in  this  joint  enterprise 
which,  it  is  significant  to  note,  was  engineered,  not  by 
Cadart  or  any  other  publisher  identified  with  the  his- 
tory of  etching  under  the  Second  Empire,  but  with  one 
who  hitherto  had  limited  himself  exclusively  to  literary 
enterprises,  and  was  intimately  associated  with  the  rise 
of  the  ''Parnassian"  school  of  French  poetry.  The 
house  of  Lemerre  is  to-day  one  of  the  most  important  in 
Paris.  But  its  beginnings,  which  reach  back  only  four  or 
five  years  before  the  publication  of  Sonnets  ct  Eaux-fortes, 
were  modest  —  even  humble  —  enough.  M.  Edmond 
Lepelletier  has  given  an  interesting  account  of  these  in 
his  Paul  Verlaine,  Sa  Vie,  Son.  CEuvre,^  as  well  as  of  the 
group  of  poets  of  whom,  as  M.  Remy  de  Gourmont 
points  out  in  a  recent  appreciation  of  their  belated 
survivor,  Leon  Dierx,  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  they 
most  owe  their  success  to  Lemerre,  or  he  owes  his  to 
them. 

The  leaders  of  th(^  Parnassian  movement  had  at  first 
assumed  the  style  of  Les  Impassibles;  and,  as  this  name 
indicates,  they  cultivated  an  attitude  of  stoic  self- 
restraint  with  which  was  blended  an  ehnnent  of  dandyism 

Paris..350  copies,  and  plates  destroyed.  Dedicated  "  Aux  poetes  ct  aux 
artistes  qui  ont  coUabores  k  cette  oeuvre,  a  M.  Philippe  Burty  qui  en 
a  dirigc  I'illustration,  I'editeur  reconnaissant,  A.  Lemerre." 

'  Paul  Verlaine,  His  Life — His  Work.  Translated  into  English  by 
E.  M.  Lang.     New  York:  Duffield  &  Co. 


and  of  disdainful  indifference  towards  the  common  con- 
cerns of  mankind.  They  repudiated  the  lachrymose  sen- 
timentality of  Lamartine,  the  "unlya'ical  brilliance"  of 
Alfred  de  Musset,  and  —  although  they  continued  to 
admire  the  poet  himself  —  the  political  preoccupations 
and  humanitarian  enthusiasms  of  Victor  Hugo.  Their 
new  note  which,  in  brief,  represented  simply  a  reaction 
against  the  excesses  of  romanticism,  was  —  in  theory, 
at  least  —  compounded  of  a  frigid  impersonality,  an 
ideal  adoration  of  beauty  as  it  appealed  primarily  to  the 
painter  and  to  the  sculptor,  and  an  entire  devotion  to 
the  practice  of  an  impeccable,  painstaking,  and  rather 
inhuman,  art.  Thus  they  found  their  naturally  ap- 
pointed masters  in  Theophile  Gautier,  with  his  doctrine 
of  'Tart  pour  Vart,'^  Alfred  de  Vigny,  with  the  lordly 
isolation  of  his  "ivory  tower";  Theodore  de  Banville, 
with  his  virtuosity  and  scrupulous  exactitude  in  the 
use  of  the  metrical  instrument  he  did  so  much  to  develop 
and  refine;  and  Charles  Baudelaire,  with  his  strange 
intensity,  and  yet  almost  reticent  sobriety  and  restraint 
of  expression,  making  him  one  of  the  most  enigmatic  of 
poets  and  artists.  Closest  to  them  all,  however,  on  the 
personal,  as  on  the  artistic,  side  —  their  real  elder 
brother  in  the  spirit  —  stood  the  Creole  poet,  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  who  seemed  to  soar  above  the  world  on  the 
wings  of  the  eagle  which  he  himself  has  described,  and 
to  embrace  the  entire  vision  of  earth  and  sky  in  his  epic 
gaze. 

Like  all  Parisian  movements,  this  one  was  organized 
in  a  cafe,  but  it  soon  found  a  salon  in  the  home  of  one  of 
its  leaders,  Louis-Xavier  Ricard,  at  No.  10,  Boulevard 
des  Batignolles,  where  Madame  Ricard,  mother  of  the 
poet  and  journalist,  entertained  her  son's  associates, 

44 


and  let  them  talk  as  long  and  as  loudly  as  they 
liked. 

"This  improvised  salon,"  writes  M.  Lepelletier,  "was 
a  simple  and  suburban  affair,"  but  "it  exercised  a  deci- 
sive influence  upon  the  movement  of  ideas,  and  more 
especially  upon  the  formation  of  a  new  school  of  poetry 
among  the  literary  youth  of  1866-70.  It  was  here  that 
Parnassianism  had  its  cradle,"  and  it  was  here  that 
many  poets,  destined  to  become  famous,  made  their 
debut.  For  example,  it  "witnessed  the  first  introduction 
of  a  rough-headed  poet,  whose  appearance  had  the  effect 
of  a  dawn,  viz.,  the  brilliant  and  sparkling  Catulle 
Mendes:  refinement  in  ringlets.  He  was  credited  in 
those  days  with  the  vices  of  which  he  was  probably 
ignorant,  and  the  talent  of  which  he  already  showed 
signs  was  not  properly  appreciated.  Mendes,  in  his 
turn,  introduced  a  young  man,  pale  and  thin,  with 
brilliant,  deep-set  eyes,  and  inscrutable  expression, 
whom  he  presented  to  us  as  a  clerk  in  the  War  Office, 
desirous  of  reciting  some  verses  .  .  .  His  name  was 
Francois  Coppee." 

"At  his  side  might  be  seen  a  youth  of  serene  aspect 
and  tranquil  mien,  with  a  small  nose,  somewhat  senten- 
tious speech,  of  circumspect  regard,  and  prudent  hand- 
shake, who  delivered  himself  of  a  sonnet,  which  had 
something  to  do  with  a  turbot,  placed  by  a  decree  of  the 
senate  before  Csesar  with  sauce  piquante.''  This  was 
Anatole  France,  whose  mind  seems  to  have  been 
obsessed  by  the  thought  of  Caesar  at  this  time,  since, 
as  we  shall  see,  the  sonnet  which  he  contributed  to 
Sonnets  et  Eanx-fortes  dealt  with  another  phase  of  the 
same  subject.  "SuUy-Prudhomme,  the  oldest  of  us  all, 
graceful  and  gentle,  .  .  .  also  recited,  in  a  slow,  monoto- 

45 


nous  sing-song,  the  admirable  philosophical  sonnets 
which  later  on  were  collected  and  published  under  the 
title,  Les  Epreuves.  One  by  one  they  leant  against  the 
mantelpiece  to  enunciate  their  verses,  retiring  after- 
wards to  a  corner  in  silence." 

There  were  others  as  well,  among  them  the  mad 
genius,  Auguste  Villiers  de  ITsle-Adam,  and  the  West 
Indian,  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia,  "sonorous,  exuberant, 
amiable,  well-dressed,  displaying  a  gold  chain  on  his 
evening  waistcoat,  with  his  handsome  brown  beard,"  — 
in  short,  a  typical  Creole  gentleman  of  the  planter  class 
—  who  "would  declaim  sounding  verses  and  reproduce 
the  cries  with  which  Artemis  filled  Ortygia  as  she  chased 
the  wild  leopards.  Les  Trophees,  with  its  note  of  triumph, 
published  twenty-five  years  later,  dates  from  this 
period." 

But  although  these  young  poets  enjoyed  their  private 
recitals  before  a  sympathetic  audience,  they  were  ambi- 
tious to  reach  a  larger  public,  and  w^hat  they  wanted 
more  than  anything  else  was,  accordingly,  a  publisher. 

"Our  comrade,  Ernest  Boutier  (a  violinist),  knew  a 
bookseller  in  the  Passage  Choiseul,  whose  customers 
mostly  purchased  books  of  prayer  and  first  communion, 
which  he  displayed  at  No.  45,  the  corner  shop,  where  the 
Passage  opened  out  into  the  Place  Ventadour,  in  which 
the  Italian  theatre  then  stood.  This  l^ookseller  was 
young,  intelligent,  enterprising,  aml)itious,  and  dreamed 
of  something  better  than  being  the  mere  successor  of  a 
certain  Percepied.  He  therefore  lent  an  ear  to  the  ten- 
tative suggestions  of  Ernest  Boutier,  backed  up  by 
Verlaine,  Ricard,  and  myself;  and  finally  consented  to 
publish  certain  volumes  of  poetry,  which  it  was  under- 
stood were  to  be  printed  at  the  expense  of  the  authors, 

46 


and  to  act  as  agent  for  a  literary  journal  we  were  con- 
templating." 

The  first  volume  issued  was  del,  Rue,  et  Foyer,  by 
Ricard,  and  this  was  followed  by  two  volumes,  Le 
Reliquaire  and  Poemes  Saturniens  by  Frangois  Coppee 
and  Paul  Verlaine  respectively —  "a  triple  commence- 
ment, and  also  the  first  essay  of  the  excellent  Alphonse 
Lemerre,  who  was  before  long  to  concjuer  fame  and  for- 
tune by  publishing  poetry,  an  undertaking  at  all  times 
hazardous,  and  in  those  days  regarded  as  absolutely 
mad." 

Then  in  the  same  year  was  launched  the  now  cele- 
brated collection  of  contemporary  verse,  Pornasse 
Contemporain  —  so  called  at  the  suggestion  of  a  scholar 
who  was  engaged  in  editing  Ronsard  and  the  other 
poets  of  La  Pleiade  for  Lemerre  —  which  gave  its  name 
to  an  entire  period  of  French  poetry.  Edited  by  Ricard, 
it  appeared  monthly  in  parts  of  sixteen  pages  each,  from 
March  3  to  July  14,  1866.  The  first  part  contained 
poems  by  Gautier,  Banville,  and  Heredia.  The  second 
was  entirely  devoted  to  Leconte  de  Lisle.  The  third 
brought  together  Louis  Menard,  Frangois  Coppee,  and 
Auguste  Vacquerie.  Part  V  presented  some  new  Fleurs 
da  Mai  by  Baudelaire,  and  so  on  through  a  long  list 
which  includes  Leon  Dierx,  Sully-Prudhomme,  Paul 
Verlaine,  Stephane  Mallarme,  and  others  too  numerous 
to  mention. 

Poets  old  and  young,  and  of  all  shades  of  poetic  tem- 
perament, were  assembled  in  this  eclectic  publication 
which  attracted  such  general  attention  that,  three  years 
later,  Lemerre,  who  by  that  time  had  achieved  important 
success,  issued  a  second  series  with  the  editorial  assist- 
ance of  Leconte  de  Lisle.   "Some  of  the  poets  who,  for 

47 


various  reasons,  and  notably  Sainte-Beuve  and  Auguste 
Barbier  .  .  .  were  not  included  among  the  authors  in 
the  first  volume,  were  invited  to  take  part  in  the  sec- 
ond," and  the  gates  of  Parnassus  swung  wide  to  include 
a  host  of  newcomers. 

This  second  volume  appeared  in  1869,  and  the  same 
year  Lemerre  issued  Sonnets  et  Eaux-fortes.  It  might 
well  have  been  entitled  Parnasse  Contemporain  Illustre; 
for  nearly  all  the  poets  represented  in  it  had  already 
appeared  in  one  or  the  other,  or  both,  of  the  preceding 
volumes,  and  it  was  no  less  representative  of  the  new 
movement.  The  Parnassian  poets,  having  proclaimed 
an  impersonal  and  objective  attitude,  and  adopted  a 
descriptive  method  leased  mainly  on  visual  impressions, 
recognized  a  special  affinity  between  their  art  and  that 
of  design.  What,  therefore,  could  be  more  appropriate 
and  suggestive  from  an  aesthetic  standpoint,  than  an  ac- 
tive alliance  between  the  two,  in  which  each  should  sup- 
plement the  other,  the  sharpness  of  the  etched  line  deep- 
ening the  impressions  of  form  and  color  conveyed  more 
faintly  by  the  words,  and  these,  in  turn,  amplifying  the 
ideas  and  sentiments  that  the  artists  were  able  to  indi- 
cate only  indirectly  and  symbolically  in  the  pictures? 
We  have  already  mentioned  Baudelaire's  approxima- 
tion of  etching  to  the  art  of  literary  expression.  There 
was  also  another  way  in  which  his  influence  was  felt. 
A  collector  himself,  this  friend  of  Meryon  set  the  fashion 
for  the  man  of  letters  to  be  an  amateur  des  estampes,  and 
the  patron  of  etchers,  and  there  was  more  than  one 
example  of  friendly  relations  between  the  practitioners 
in  the  two  arts,  as  in  the  case  of  Bracquemond  and 
the  Goncourts.  Several  poets  had  even  experimented 
with  the  needle  themselves.    Chief  among  these  was 

48 


Daubigny.     Le  Verger 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  7%  X  4^4  inches 


Victor  Hugo,  who  had  been  instructed  by  Maxime  La- 
lanne  on  the  island  of  Guernsey;  while,  among  the 
minor  poets,  Claudius  Popelin  was  both  a  painter  and 
an  etcher,  as  well  as  a  designer  in  enamel. 

Popelin  enjoys  the  unique  distinction  of  appearing  in 
his  dual  capacity  in  Sonnets  et  Eaux-fortes.  It  is,  how- 
ever, a  distinction  to  which  he  is  scarcely  entitled  by 
any  skill  on  his  part.  A  competent,  but  not  in  any 
way  remarkable,  poet,  he  shows  himself  a  very  feeble 
draughtsman  in  the  inferior  figure  study  for  Heredia's 
fine  sonnet,  Les  Conquerants,  while  he,  in  turn,  is  illus- 
trated, in  his  Dernier  Amour  de  Charlemagne,  with  ecjual 
mediocrity,  by  an  obscure  painter  and  etcher  named 
Ehrmann.  Victor  Hugo,  on  the  other  hand,  appears 
only  as  an  artist.  He  had  previously  pleaded  an  arrange- 
ment with  his  publisher  as  an  excuse  for  not  contribut- 
ing to  either  of  the  volumes  of  the  Parnasse,  and  no 
doubt  the  same  plea  explains  his  non-appearance  here 
as  a  poet.  Bat  no  such  obstacle  existed  to  his  sending  in 
a  dessifi  for  the  sonnet,  U Eclair,  of  his  young  friend  and 
admirer,  Paul  Meurice,  who  later  became  his  literary 
executor,  and  it  must  unquestionably  have  flattered  the 
colossal  vanity  of  the  poet  to  be  thus  publicly  accorded 
a  place  among  the  recognized  masters  of  designing. 
The/ plate  which  bears  his  name,  however,  was  etched, 
not  by  Hugo  himself,  but  by  Charles  Courtry,  also 
represented  by  original  work  elsewhere  in  the  volume. 

The  names  one  misses  most  in  looking  down  the  list 
of  poets  and  artists  represented  in  Sonnets  et  Eaux- 
fortes,  are  those  of  Charles  Meryon  and  Charles  Baude- 
laire. Both  had  died,  insane,  before  the  book  was  even 
projected,  so  that  they  missed  this  opportunity  for  a 
collaboration  which,  it  will  be  recalled,  was  at  one  time 

49 


seriously  contemplated  in  connection  with  the  proposed 
publication  of  Mer^yon's  Eaux-fortes  sur  Paris.  Meryon's 
place  is  scarcely  filled  by  his  imitator,  Louis  Armand 
Queyroy,  who  pul^lished  views  of  Vendome  and  of  the 
streets  and  houses  of  old  Blois  in  a  physical  dress  that  at 
once  suggests  Meryon,  and  to  whom  Victor  Hugo  had 
written  (as  he  had  previously  written  to  Meryon  and  as 
he  habitually  wrote  to  all  artists  who  sent  him  their 
work,  with  the  same  facile  flattery  that  deprived  his 
recognition  of  all  critical  value):  "C'est  la  fidelite  photo- 
graphique  avec  la  liberie  du  grand  art."  There  is  more  of 
photography  than  of  great  art  in  Queyroy's  work,  but 
it  is  not  without  a  merit,  little  trace  of  which,  however, 
appears  in  his  illustration  for  Le  Sphinx,  by  Henri 
Cazalis. 

Meryon  and  Baudelaire  are  absent,  but  there  is 
plentiful,  if  not  always  adequate,  representation  of 
other  major  poets  and  etchers  of  the  period,  though, 
unfortunately,  their  names  rarely  occur  in  conjunction. 
Thus,  among  the  poets  of  the  first  romantic  generation, 
there  is  Theophile  Gautier,  whose  Promenade  hors  des 
murs,  showing  Dr.  Faustus  and  his  famulus  Wagner 
sitting  moodily  apart  from  their  fellow-citizens  on  a 
festal  occasion,  is  illustrated  by  the  Belgian,  Baron 
Leys.  Leys  produced  many  similar  scenes  of  Flemish 
mediaeval  life,  which  were  popular  in  Paris  for  a  time, 
probably  for  the  same  reason  that  Victor  Hugo's  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris  was  hailed  as  a  masterpiece  of  fiction. 
But  Beraldi's  judgment  that,  aside  from  his  selection  of 
subjects,  where  the  French  artist  is  admitted  to  have 
the  advantage  (though  on  precisely  what  grounds,  other 
than  sentimental,  is  not  clearly  stated),  Lej^s  is  the  equal 
of  Millet,  is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  criticism.   On  the 

50 


CouRTRY  (After  \'ictor  Hugo).     L'Eclair 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  8^>8  X  SVs  inches 


Leys.     Promenade  hors  des  Murs 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  7%  X  5"/8  inches 


other  hand,  Samte-Beuve's  sonnet  on  Le  Pont  des  Arts, 
was  assigned  to  Maxime  Lalanne,  a  not  unworthy  allot- 
ment, although  that  excellent  etcher's  work  in  this 
instance  is  rather  hard  and  mechanical.  The  third  of 
these  older  poets,  Auguste  Barbier,  famous  for  his 
political  invectives,  had  the  misfortune  to  fall  to  the  lot 
of  un  nomme  Giacomotti,  who  contributed  a  caricature 
of  Botticelli's  Nascita  di  Venere  to  accompany  a  sonnet 
celebrating  To  KaXoV. 

Prominent  among  the  poets  of  the  second  romantic 
generation  is  Leconte  de  Lisle  who  drew  one  of  the  most 
workmanlike  of  the  younger  etchers,  Leopold  Flameng, 
but  his  subject,  Combat  Homerique,  presented  an  almost 
impossible  problem  for  an  etcher,  and  the  result  is  a 
weak  and  empty  outline  drawing  somewhat  in  the  man- 
ner of  Flaxman.  Theodore  de  Banville's  Promenade 
Galante,  is  depicted  by  Edmond  Morin,  who  has  a  place 
in  the  history  of  French  illustration  in  the  19th  century 
as  heritor  of  the  ideals  of  elegance  and  refinement  from 
Eisen,  Cochin,  and  Marillier,  though  more  languid  and 
sentimental,  but  who  is  hardly  of  importance  as  an 
etcher.  The  same  is  true  of  Celcstin  Nanteuil,  who  inter- 
prets Louis  Bouilhet's  Le  Sang  des  Geants,  in  a  hard, 
dry,  and  matter-of-fact  manner,  and  gives  little  evidence 
of  that  stormy  fugue  with  which  he  was  popularly  sup- 
posed to  produce  his  famous  eaux-fortes  noires,  when  he 
was  the  romantic  illustrator  and  engraver  par  excellence, 
and  used,  so  the  legend  ran,  to  shout  to  his  assistants,  as 
his  fury  was  excited  by  the  fumes  of  the  acid,  to  bite  his 
plates  till  they  "cracked"  (crevaient) . 

Nanteuil  was  a  youth  of  only  seventeen  when  he 
escaped  from  his  art  school  in  1830  to  join  the  band 
of  Les  Jeunes,  who  accompanied  their  demigod  Victor 

51 


Hugo  to  and  from  the  theatre,  and  formed  a  faithful 
phalanx  to  applaud  the  first  production  of  Hernani. 
"Jeune  homme  moyen-dge,'^  he  was  called  playfully  by 
Gautier  in  those  days,  and  it  was  from  a  mixture  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  Renaissance  that,  as  Beraldi  says, 
he  invented  that  illustrative  formula  which  he  applied 
with  such  contemporary  success  to  works  by  Victor 
Hugo,  Dumas,  Petrus  Borel,  and  Paul  de  Kock.  But 
his  was  a  shallow  though  showy  talent,  and  the  passing 
of  romanticism  left  him  stranded.  He  lived  to  regret 
the  wasted  time  and  facile  triumphs  of  his  youth,  which 
apparently  he  felt  had  frustrated  the  more  serious  artistic 
triumphs  fate  once  held  in  store  for  him  —  though 
doubtless  this  was  no  less  an  illusion  than  that  which 
led  him  after  the  romantic  will-o'-the-wisp.  At  all  events, 
Beraldi  tells  us  that  when,  about  this  time,  Philippe 
Burty,  friend  and  interpreter  of  Meryon,  visited  Nanteuil 
in  his  studio,  "  he  found  him  little  disposed  to  anecdote 
and  of  a  haughty  and  reserved  air"  —  the  air  of  a  man 
who  has  failed,  and  attributes  his  failure  to  the  fault 
of  others  and  an  adverse  fate. 

A  pupil  of  Nanteuil's  was  Edmond  Hedouin  who,  like 
Morin,  was  noted  for  his  fashionable  elegance  and 
grace,  and  who  illustrated  Sully-Prudhomme's  sonnet, 
Silence  et  Nuit  des  Bois;  while  among  the  other  illustra- 
tors may  be  mentioned  Emile  Boilvin,  also  a  painter, 
who  has  little  opportunity  to  display  his  affected  pretti- 
ness  in  Jean  Vireton's  Rabelaisian  episode,  Apres  la 
Harangue:  Felix  Regamey,  a  caricaturist,  who  visited 
and  worked  in  both  England  and  America,  and  who 
made,  as  far  as  Beraldi's  records  show,  only  the  one 
etching  which  here  accompanies  the  unfortunate  Albert 
Glatigny's  Le  Roman  Comique;  Gustave  Jundt,  who 


illustrated  many  children's  books,  and  who  contributes 
a  rather  clever  costume  and  character  drawing  for 
Emmanuel  des  Essarts'  Les  Incroyables  —  dandies  of 
the  Directoire  period  —  and,  of  course,  Gustave  Dore, 
whose  study  of  a  lion  for  Leon  Cladel's  sonnet  on  that 
beast,  reminds  us  of  van  Muyden,  though  it  is  not  so 
well  drawn,  being  quite  flat  and  without  bones  or  bulk 
in  the  body. 

It  was  apparently  Dore's  first  experiment  with  the 
needle,  for  Beraldi  dates  the  real  awakening  of  his 
interest  in  etching  from  a  period  three  years  later,  or 
1872.  He  then  became  very  enthusiastic  and  produced 
some  fifty-four  plates  dealing  with  a  variety  of  subjects, 
and  including  several  life-sized  heads  of  Christ,  one  of 
which  he  is  said  to  have  executed  in  less  than  an  hour; 
for  he  worked  as  rapidly  with  the  needle  on  copper  as  he 
did  with  the  pencil  on  the  woodblock.  According  to 
Beraldi,  Dore  rarely  bit  his  own  plates;  but  sometimes 
he  did  so,  and  the  printer  Salmon  has  told  how  the  art- 
ist's valet,  who  took  a  personal  interest  in  his  master's 
pursuits,  used  to  rush  into  the  printing  office  exclaim- 
ing: "Here  is  another  plate  that  Monsieur  and  I  have 
just  finished!" 

Dore's  productivity  in  what,  after  all,  remained  for 
him  an  alien  medium,  contrasts  with  Gerome's  total 
output  of  four  etchings,  one  of  which  is  the  very  slight 
and  tentative  sketch  for  Anatole  France's  Un  Smateur 
Romain.  Other  painters  who  produced  a  few  plates 
only,  were  Jules  Hereau,  paired  with  Laurent-Pichart 
(Reverie);  Auguste  Feyen-Perrin,  with  Armande  Sil- 
vestre  (Nenuphars);  Emile  Levy,  with  Autran  (Le 
Masque) ;  Victor  Ranvier,  with  Emile  Deschamps 
(Dernier  Mirage). 

53 


The  poets  mentioned  in  the  preceding  paragraphs 
were  all,  or  nearly  all,  of  the  youngest,  neo-romantic,  or 
Parnassian,  generation.  To  them  should  be  added  cer- 
tain others.  For  example,  there  is  Jean  Aicard,  to-day  a 
member  of  the  French  Academy,  and  better  known  as 
a  writer  of  humorous  picaresque  novels  dealing  with  the 
adventures  of  one  Maurin,  than  as  a  poet.  His  sonnet. 
La  Mer,  on  the  other  hand,  was  illustrated  by  one  of  the 
older  etchers,  Leon  Gaucherel,  who  instructed  so  many 
pupils  in  the  art  —  Flameng  was  one  of  them  —  that 
he  was  called  by  some  admirers  the  "father  of  etching" 
—  "let  us  say  uncle,  rather,"  remarked  one  dissenter. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Gaucherel  was  an  excellent  crafts- 
man rather  than  an  artist  in  the  strict  sense,  and  did  his 
best  work  on  plates  that  exhibit  his  skill  as  an  architec- 
tural draughtsman  and  decorative  designer.  The  speci- 
men of  his  original  work  shown  here  is  weak  and  ama- 
teurish. Nor  is  that  sound  reproductive  etcher,  Charles 
Courtry,  seen  to  the  best  advantage  in  his  plate  for 
Frangois  Coppee's  Fils  de  Louis  XL  Coppee  was  the 
first  of  the  new  poets  to  win  fame  and  to  attract  attention 
to  the  little  group  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  original 
or  "charter"  members.  To  this,  as  we  have  seen,  also 
belonged  CatuUe  Mendes  and  Louis-Xavier  Ricard. 
Both  chose  feminine  subjects —  Theodora  and  Theroigne 
de  Mer  (court  —  which  were  illustrated  by  Ingomar 
Frankel  and  Victor  Giraud,  respectively;  while  the  Eng- 
lish artist,  Edward  Edwards,  who  was  so  highly  praised 
by  his  contemporaries,  including  Haden  and  Whistler, 
was  associated  with  the  poet  Edouard  Grenier  in  a 
maritime  subject,  the  wreck  of  La  Sulifia;  L.-M.  Solon, 
an  industrial  artist  attached  to  the  French  governmental 
works  at  Sevres,  with  Leon  Valade  {La  Chute) ;  Tancrede 

54 


RraoT.    Une  Grande  Douleur 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  Ttj^  X  4%  inches 


Abraham,  with  Arsene  Houssaye  (Le  Pays  Inconnu); 
and  Francois-Louis  Frangais,  with  Victor  de  la  Prade 
{Au  Bord  du  Piiits). 

Not  Gaucherel,  l)ut  Jacque,  is  the  real  "father  of 
French  etching."  He  perhaps  it  is,  who,  for  this  reason, 
is  most  missed  in  the  present  collection  among  the 
artist  contributors.  Whistler,  Legros,  and  Appian  are, 
however,  also  important  absentees.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  here  are  Corot  and  Millet,  Haden  and  Daubigny, 
Manet  and  Jongkind,  Bracquemond  and  Jacquemart, 
Raj  on  and  Veyrassat,  and  several  other  excellent  artists 
or  skillful  craftsman,  though  they  are  by  no  means  all 
represented  by  their  best  work.  Thus  Corot's  Paysage 
Normand  (for  a  poem  by  Andre  Lemoyne),  afterwards 
published  under  the  title  of  Dans  les  Dunes;  Souvenir  des 
Bois  da  la  Haye  is  thoroughly  charming  and  characteris- 
tic, as  are  also  Millet's  study  of  a  peasant  girl  with  a 
spindle  tending  goats,  for  a  poem  by  Albert  Merat,  and 
Jongkind's  winter  scene,  with  skaters,  on  a  Dutch  canal, 
Batavia  —  the  more  interesting  of  two  studies  which  he 
made  of  this  subject  —  for  one  by  Robert  Luzarche. 
Bracquemond 's  U Eclipse,  to  the  words  of  the  elder 
romantic  poet,  Auguste  Vacquerie  is  a  rather  piquant 
conception  realized  with  considerable  feeling  for  design, 
while  Beraldi  calls  Ribot's  line  Grande  Douleur,  which 
shows  Josephin  Soulary's  ouvrier  mourning  over  a 
broken  pipe,  that  artist's  best  work  on  copper. 

But  Haden's  treatment  of  trees  and  of  light  and 
shade  on  the  forest  floor  in  La  Rookery  ^  (Ernest  d'Her- 
villy) ,  is  in  that  extravagantly  blurred  and  blotted  style 
that    stirred    Ruskin's   wrath,    and    suggests    Chinese 

1  In  both  Drake's  and  Harrington's  catalogues  of  Seymour  Ha- 
den's work  this  plate  is  called  "  The  Herd" 


"bunginja,"  or  mandarin,  art.  Manet's  Fleur  Exotique 
(Armand  Renaud)  is  too  obviously  an  imitation  —  and 
a  superficial  imitation  —  of  Goya.  Daubigny's  Le 
Verger,  while  entirely  expressive  of  the  sentimental 
spirit  of  Gabriel  Marc's  text,  is  hardly  on  a  level  with 
his  highest  achievements  in  painter-etching.  Jacque- 
mart's  La  Pivoine,  for  a  sonnet  by  Judith  Gautier, 
daughter  of  Theophile,  and  the  only  woman  represented 
in  the  collection  —  is  an  insipid  japonaiserie  without 
such  delicacy  in  the  drawing  as  we  would  have  expected 
from  this  master  of  still  life.  Rajon's  Le  Pitre  (Paul 
Verlaine),  in  spite  of  its  technical  competence,  is  a 
triviality  of  the  illustrated  papers;  and  Veyrassat's 
Supplice  de  Judas  dans  VEnJer  (Antoni  Deschamps),  is  a 
crude  attempt  to  treat  an  imaginative  subject  somewhat 
outside  the  proper  domain  of  etching. 

From  such  failures,  or  comparative  failures,  of  recog- 
nized masters,  it  is  pleasant  to  pass  to  the  successes,  or 
at  least  the  intelligent  attempts,  of  lesser-known  men. 
G.  Howard,  for  example,  in  his  study  of  windswept  trees 
on  a  hillside,  for  Revolte,  by  Leon  Dierx  —  latest  and 
almost  the  last  of  the  prominent  Parnassians  to  pass 
away  —  shows  a  perception  of  the  painter-etcher's  true 
linear  method  superior  to  that  of  some  of  his  better- 
known  contemporaries;  Jules  Michelin,  in  Souvenir  du 
Bas-Breau  (Andre  Theuriet),  if  less  poetical  and  imagi- 
native, brings  to  the  realization  of  his  intentions  a  more 
complete  mastery  of  medium  and  method  (his  treatment 
of  trees  reminds  us  at  times  of  Storm  van's  Gravesande 
in  certain  of  the  latter's  woodland  studies) ;  and  Lansyer, 
in  La  Fontaine  (George  Lafenestre),  seems  to  have 
come  under  the  classical  influence  of  Nicholas  Berchem 
and  Claude  Lorrain. 

56 


Altogether  it  will  be  seen  that  Sonnets  et  Eaux-Jortes 
has  historical  interest  rather  than  artistic  value  of  a 
high  order.  The  opportunity  offered,  it  might  seem,  by 
the  ingenious  plan  of  the  publication,  was  by  no  means 
improved  to  the  fullest  extent.  Not  that  the  artists  them- 
selves were  entirely  responsible  for  the  failure  of  so  inter- 
esting an  experiment.  Some  were,  indeed,  poor  etchers, 
without  sufficient  practice  in  the  art  or  knowledge  of 
its  principles,  while  others  were  not  so  much  artists  as 
skillful  craftsmen,  incapable  of  important  creative  effort. 
But  several  were  set  tasks  which,  if  not  impossible, 
were,  at  any  rate,  difficult  and  ill-adapted  to  the  display 
of  the  best  possibilities  of  the  medium.  But  the  ultimate 
reason  for  the  slight  and  disappointing  results  is  doubt- 
less to  be  sought  in  the  obligation  imposed  upon  the 
artist  to  realize  the  idea  of  another  rather  than  his  own 
—  to  become  an  illustrator  —  and  this  in  the  most 
intensely  personal  and  spontaneous  of  mediums.  It  is 
therefore  not  remarkable  that,  after  all,  those  who  suc- 
ceeded best  in  the  present  undertaking  were  not  always 
the  most  accomplished  etchers,  or  even  the  finest  artists, 
but  often  merely  those  who  had  a  special  talent  for  illus- 
tration, and  were  men  of  clever  attainments  rather  than 
of  genius. 

But  if  the  artistic  level  of  Sonnets  et  Eaux-Jortes  is  not 
high,  its  contents  are  at  least  varied  and  interesting,  and 
represent  a  wide  range  of  tastes  and  talents.  On  the 
whole,  moreover,  the  prints  are  quite  worthy  of  the 
poems  which  they  accompany,  and  the  majority  of  which 
are  anecdotal  or  descriptive  trifles.  There  are  few  really 
fine  sonnets  among  them,  and  there  is  no  particular 
reason  why  the  greater  number  should  have  been  cast 
in  sonnet,  rather  than  in  any  other,  form.    Some  of  the 

57 


younger  authors  were,  in  after  years,  to  achieve  a  fame 
as  conspicuous  as  that  then  enjoyed  by  their  elders  — 
but  not,  as  in  the  case  of  Verlaine,  for  example,  through 
the  sort  of  work  by  which  they  are  represented  in  Sonnets 
et  Eaux-fortes.  This,  as  we  have  said,  w^as  a  virtual 
continuation  of  Parnasse  Contemporain,  the  publication 
primarily,  of  a  school.  But,  writes  M.  Remy  de  Gour- 
mont,  in  the  study  of  Dierx  alluded  to  above,  "of  all 
these  poets  of  Parnassus,  none  was  popular  or  even 
known  to  the  public  in  so  far  as  he  was  Parnassian,  that 
is  to  say,  impassible  and  impeccable.  The  reason  is, 
that  they  all  had,  in  these  years  —  this  is  true  even  of 
Coppee  and  Verlaine  —  an  attitude  of  painter-decora- 
tors. They  described  life,  above  all  in  its  brilliant  and 
picturesque  parts,  and  disdained  to  participate  in  it 
otherwise  than  by  very  lofty  illusions." 

It  is  this  sort  of  painter  decorating  —  if  not  painter- 
etching! — that  dominates  Sonnets  et  Eaux-fortes. 


Manet.    Fleur  Exotiqde 
Size  of  the  original  etching,  6%  X4i.^  inchea 


V 

THE    GOXCOUllTS    AND    THEIR    CIRCLE 

lOWHERE  is  the  teeming  intellectual  and 
artistic  life  of  the  second  half  of  the  XlXth 
Century  in  France  found  so  completely 
focussed  and  concentrated  as  it  is  in  the 
famous  Journal  des  Goncourts.  The  brothers  began  it 
in  1851,  the  year  of  the  Coup  d'etat,  —  the  year  also 
when  they  published  their  first  novel,  whose  failure 
they  were  always  inclined  to  attribute,  half  seriously, 
to  the  fatal  effects  of  that  political  event  in  diverting 
public  attention  from  their  maiden  effort,  —  and 
Edmond,  who  outlived  Jules  by  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury, continued  it  down  to  1895,  the  year  of  his 
literary  "Jubilee." 

In  this  half-century  they  witnessed  the  decline  of 
Romanticism  both  in  art  and  in  literature,  and  helped 
to  shape  the  new  movement  of  Naturalism  which  sup- 
planted it;  while  Edmond,  in  the  early  eighties,  was  one 
of  the  first  to  recognize  at  once  the  aims  and  the  methods 
of  Impressionism  in  painting.  These,  indeed,  he  himself 
had  already  practiced  in  his  later  prose  fiction  —  partly, 
at  least,  as  the  result  of  his  study  of  Japanese  art, 
which  he  was  among  the  first  to  initiate  in  Europe,  just 
as  he  and  his  brother  had  already  led  in  a  revival  of 
interest  in  the  art  of  the  XVIIIth  Century. 

59 


Champions  of  light  and  color  in  painting,  they  were 
also  ardent  amateurs  of  black  and  white  in  the  arts 
of  design.  No  one  appreciated  more  thoroughly  the 
artistic  value  of  etching  and  lithography,  or  better  un- 
derstood their  limitations  and  possibilities.  Nearly  all 
the  principal  etchers,  lithographers,  and  even  book- 
illustrators,  —  who  at  that  period  still  continued  to 
draw  their  designs  upon  the  wood  block,  —  were  their 
friends  and  acquaintances  —  members  of  that  great 
and  ever-extending  circle  which,  in  the  course  of  time, 
came  almost  to  coincide  with  the  upper  art-world  of 
Paris. 

It  is  on  this  personal  side  that  the  Journal  with  its 
day-to-day  record  of  encounters,  conversations,  criti- 
cism, and  illuminating  anecdote,  is  above  all  inter- 
esting. The  Goncourts  were  distinguished  artists  and 
competent  critics  of  art.  But,  through  their  intense  self- 
conscious  absorption  in  all  that  immediately  pertained 
to  themselves  and  to  their  contemporaries,  they  be- 
came, in  their  loose,  scattered,  and  often  trivial-seeming 
chronicle,  more  than  all  else,  the  spiritual  historians  of 
their  epoch. 


Both  Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt  had  studied  art 
before  they  turned  their  talents  to  literature,  and  they 
never  entirely  lost  touch  with  the  Bohemian  artistic  life 
of  Paris  as  described  by  the  Romantic  writer,  Henri 
Murger,  in  his  Scenes  de  la  vie  de  Boheme. 

Having  in  mind,  perhaps,  Murger's  own  grim  and 
grewsome  end,  than  which  the  rigid  moralist  could  de- 
mand no  better  commentary  on  the  dangers  of  the  Bo- 


Gavarni.     Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt 
From  Messieurs  du  Feuilleton 


hemian  ideal,  the  Goncourts  themselves  gave  in  Ma- 
nette  Salomon,  an  account  of  conditions  in  the  Quartier 
that,  wliile  scarcely  less  fascinating,  is  considerably  less 
couleur  de  rose.  It  is,  moreover,  a  bitter  statement  of  the 
terms  on  which  success  is  achieved  by  the  artist  in  our 
own  time,  since  the  only  character  who  is  thoroughly 
successful  is  a  painter  who  deliberately  sacrifices  every- 
thing to  obtain  official  recognition;  while  both  the 
heroes  —  the  one  with  too  much  talent  as  well  as  the 
other  without  any  —  end  in  common  failure. 

The  model  for  the  latter,  the  whimsical  Anatole,  was 
found  by  the  brothers  in  an  artist  named  Poutliier,  who 
had  been  Edmond's  companion  at  college,  and  who  actu- 
ally prolonged  for  many  a  year  in  Paris  the  miserable  ex- 
istence attributed  to  his  fictional  counterpart.  As  for 
Naz  de  Coriolis,  the  attempt  was  apparently  to  create 
in  him  the  ideal  type  of  the  great  artists  of  the  Roman- 
tic period.  1 

Like  Decamps,  Delacroix,  and  so  many  others,  Cori- 
olis was  an  Orientalist.  But  his  talent  had  also  another, 
prophetic,  side.  He  looked  to  the  future  as  well  as  to  the 
past.  And  in  his  attempt  to  represent  the  scenes  of 
contemporary  life,  he  was  as  modern  as  any  of  the  great 
painters  of  the  latter  part  of  the  century.  Such  clair- 
voyance naturally  does  credit  to  the  judgment  and 
perspicacity  of  a  writer,  and  it  is  with  pardonable  pride 
that  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  writing  in  1874  of  Degas' 
then  newly  established  preference  for  laundresses  and 
ballet  dancers,  says :  — 

"I  cannot   find  his   choice  bad,  since  I  myself,  in 

*  In  the  sixth  volume  of  the  Journal,  Edmond  de  Goncourt  speaks  of 
Beaulieu,  "le  peintre  des  feux  do  Bengale,"  whose  studio  he  had  given 
in  Manette Salomon.  Coriolis  was  also  a  "peintre  des  feux  de  Bengale " 
at  one  period. 

61 


Manette  Salofnon,  have  sung  the  praises  of  these  two 
professions,  as  furnishing  the  best  models  of  modern 
women  for  a  contemporary  artist.  In  fact,"  he  goes  on 
to  give  a  characteristic  color  note  of  his  own,  "  there  is 
in  the  rose  of  the  flesh,  in  the  white  of  the  linen,  in  the 
milky  mist  of  the  gauzes,  the  most  charming  pretext 
for  blond  and  tender  colorations." 

Those  who  have  read  Manette  Salomon  will  recall  how 
Coriolis,  balked  in  his  ambition  to  achieve  a  great  career, 
turned  to  etching,  and  found  in  that  art  a  sort  of  ano- 
dyne for  his  mood  of  disillusionment  and  despair.  The 
Goncourts  followed  the  artistic  currents  and  tenden- 
cies of  their  own  time  too  closely  not  to  note,  in  the 
preoccupation  of  painters  in  the  minor  art  of  etching,  a 
characteristic  trait  of  the  period.  But  the  passage  has 
a  personal,  autobiographical,  as  well  as  a  general,  in- 
terest. 

"All  these  last  days,"  writes  Jules  under  date  of 
March,  1859,  "we  see  no  one,  our  thought  and  attention 
deeply  plunged  in  the  eau-forte.  Nothing  so  completely 
occupies  one,  takes  him  out  of  himself,  as  these  me- 
chanical distractions." 

Both  Edmond  and  Jules  practiced  etching  to  a  cer- 
tain extent.  They  saw  in  it,  primarily,  as  they  said, 
an  oiitil  cV immortalisation,  for  the  graphic  side  of  those 
eighteenth-century  subjects  on  which  they  were  then 
engaged.  But  they  also  maintained  an  independent 
artistic  interest  in  the  medium  for  its  own  sake,  and 
after  Jules'  death,  in  1870,  Edmond  arranged  for  the 
publication  of  a  portfoho  containing  twenty  of  his 
brother's  plates,  for  which  Burty  wrote  a  preface  and 
prepared  a  catalogue. 

Philippe  Burty,  critic  and  historian  of  the  graphic 

62 


arts,  and  fine  connoisseur  of  prints,  early  met  the  Gon- 
courts  and  became  a  member  of  their  circle. 

"We  have  passed  the  day  at  Bm-ty's,"  wrote  the 
latter  some  time  in  1865.  ''An  interior  of  art,"  is  the 
way  they  characterized  the  quarters  of  this  ardent  col- 
lector, crowded  ''with  books,  lithographs,  painted 
sketches,  drawings,  faiences;  a  small  garden;  women; 
a  little  girl;  a  little  dog,  and  long  hours  spent  turning 
over  the  prints  in  card-board  boxes  lightly  brushed  by 
by  the  dress  of  a  stout,  lively,  young  singer.  .  .  .  An 
atmosphere  of  cordiality,  of  good  fellowship,  of  happy 
family,  which  makes  one  think  of  those  artistic  bour- 
geois households  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  a  little 
such  a  laughing  and  luminous  house  as  one  imagines 
to  have  been  the  abode  of  Fragonard." 

So  far  as  I  know,  the  Goncourts  never  met  Meryon,  of 
whom  their  friend  Burty  was,  with  Baudelaire,  the  co- 
discoverer,  though  they  knew  and  admired  his  work, 
writing  concerning  it  a  page  of  appreciation  that  no 
one  —  not  even  Hugo  or  Baudelaire  —  has  surpassed:  — 

"Studied,"  they  write  one  day,  "at  Niel's  the  work  of 
Meryon  in  all  its  states,  its  trials,  and  even  a  number  of 
his  designs.  It  seems  as  if  a  hand  of  the  past  had  held  the 
point  of  the  graver,  and  that  something  better  than  the  stones 
of  old  Paris  had  descended  upon  these  leaves  of  paper.  Yes, 
in  these  images,  one  would  say  that  there  had  been  resusci- 
tated a  little  of  the  soul  of  the  old  city;  it  is,  as  it  were,  a 
magic  reminiscence  of  old  quarters  foundering  sometimes 
in  the  troubled  dream  of  the  brain  of  the  visionary  poet- 
artist  who  had  seated  at  his  sides  Madness  and  Misery. 

"Poor,  miserable  madman,"  they  add  some  lines 
further  along,  after  giving  details  of  his  sufferings  and 
hallucinations,  often  erotic  or  obscene,  "poor,  miserable 


madman,  who,  in  the  lucid  intervals  of  his  mania,  takes, 
at  night,  interminable  walks  in  order  to  surprise  the 
picturesque  strangeness  of  the  shadows  in  great  cities." 

II 

If  Meryon  represented  the  culmination  of  the  Ro- 
mantic tradition  in  French  etching,  Celestin  Nanteuil, 
fed  on  Piranesi,  may  be  called  one  of  its  originators. 

Nanteuil  was  one  of  the  "Men  of  1830,"  though  be- 
longing rather  to  the  literary,  rather  than  to  the  artistic, 
group  thus  commonly  designated,  and  was  closely  allied 
with  Hugo  and  Gautier  in  all  the  public  manifestations 
of  the  first  Romantic  period.  He  was,  above  all,  a  book 
illustrator,  and  it  was  from  such  work  that  he  long  made 
his  livelihood.  But  by  1860  the  illustrated  book  had 
largely  gone  out  of  fashion  in  France,  and  when  the 
Goncourts  met  him,  he  was  already  fearful  of  the  future. 
Indeed,  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  would  have  faced  the 
prospect  of  a  destitute  old  age,  if  official  employment 
had  not  providentially  been  found  for  him  in  a  provincial 
museum. 

The  Goncourts  apparently  never  knew  any  of  the 
Barbizon  group  of  painters  who  were  the  real  "Men  of 
1830,"  in  the  artistic  acceptation  of  the  term.  At  least, 
if  they  did,  there  is  no  record  of  it  in  the  Journal,  al- 
though their  friend  Leroy,  the  engraver,  was  a  perfect 
mine  of  anecdotes  concerning  them.  But  once,  when 
they  had  accompanied  Leroy  to  the  seashore,  at  Veules, 
they  met  Jacque,  who  came  to  spend  a  day  in  their 
company. 

"He  was  dressed,"  they  recorded,  "in  black,  and 
wore  a  stove-pipe  hat  that  he  never   took  off   even 

64 


when  he  painted  and  ate.  He  drew  from  his  pocket  a 
little  album,  the  size  of  a  visiting  card,  on  wliich  he 
showed  us  twenty  geometrical  lines  representing  the 
horizons  he  had  noted  during  the  last  ten  days.  He, 
the  skillful  and  witty  sketcher,  the  brilhant  and 
learned  aquafortist,  the  master  of  the  pig,  affects  doc- 
torally  to  repudiate  all  tricks,  all  formulas,  all  manual 
dexterities  —  all  the  tilings  of  which  his  own  little, 
but  very  real,  talent  is  composed  —  going  so  far  as 
to  esteem  only  the  primitive  masters,  the  spiritual 
masters,  and  to  recognize  in  the  modern  school  but  one 
man:  M.  Ingres." 

If  it  is  thought  that  the  Goncourts  did,  on  the  whole, 
rather  less  than  justice  to  the  man  who  brought  the  in- 
fluence of  Rembrandt  back  into  modern  etching,  they 
certainly  cannot  be  accused  of  sHghting  the  English 
etcher  who  continued  his  work  in  England  and  America. 
This  was  Seymour  Haden,  whose  art  won  the  highest 
admiration  of  the  brothers.  Indeed,  Edmond  de  Gon- 
court  once  wrote  of  Haden's  plate,  Su7iset  in  Ireland, 
that  he  regarded  it  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  mod- 
ern etchings  —  one  in  which  the  artist,  "who  recov- 
ered the  velvety  black  of  Rembrandt,  has,  as  it  were, 
imprinted  on  a  sheet  of  paper,  the  melancholy  senti- 
ment of  the  twilight  hour." 

But  the  main  admiration  of  the  brothers  for  an  art- 
ist of  their  own  time,  was  reserved  for  one  of  whom  it 
is  difficult  to  say  whether  they  valued  most  highly  the 
man  himself  or  his  work.   This  was  Gavarni. 

The  great  designer,  who  was  a  still  greater  satirist, 
and  whose  lithographs,  as  they  appeared  week  after 
week  in  Le  Charivari,  had  been  studied,  and  even  copied, 
by  the  Goncourts  while  they  were  still,  as  it  were,  in 

66 


the  nursery,  had  had  no  small  share  in  shaping  their 
own  artistic  and  spiritual  development.  Seduced  by 
what  they  themselves  describe  as  "that  habitual  figura- 
tion of  pleasure,  of  love,  of  Parisian  life,  that  depiction 
of  manners  caught  in  their  vain  or  cynical  verity,  that 
mordant  exposition  of  Parisian  vice,"  which  they  found 
in  Gavarni,  they  were  tortured  to  achieve  an  equal 
truth  of  observation,  combined  with  an  equal  concise- 
ness and  elegance  of  expression,  in  the  treatment  of  sim- 
ilar subjects  drawn  from  the  as  yet  scarcely  suspected 
treasures  of  modern  life. 

As  for  the  man  himself,  he  attracted  them  by  a  per- 
sonal distinction  which  was,  in  the  main,  that  of  the  es- 
sential "Dandy"  as  defined  by  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  and 
realized  by  Merimee.  But  with  this  there  was  mixed 
something  darkly  mysterious,  almost  Machiavellian, 
which  suggested  the  malignant  Marquis  of  Les  liai- 
sons dangereuses. 

Gavarni  was  about  fifty  years  old  when  the  brothers 
made  his  acquaintance  under  circumstances  which 
they  describe  both  in  their  book,  Gavarni:  Vhomme  et 
son  oeuvre,  and  in  the  opening  pages  of  the  Journal. 
But  tall,  slender,  supple,  athletic,  with  upturned  mous- 
taches and  a  military  overcoat  buttoned  to  the  chin,  he 
had  much  more  the  appearance  of  a  man  of  thirty,  es- 
pecially as  the  red  color  of  his  hair  tended  to  conceal 
the  gray  beginning  to  be  scattered  through  it. 

He  had  been  married,  l)ut  his  wife  was  dead,  and  he 
now  lived  a  solitary  life  in  a  quaint  little  old  house,  with 
a  garden,  at  Point-du-Jour,  on  the  road  to  Versailles. 
He  was  an  indefatigable  worker.  Indeed,  he  himself 
said  that  his  life  consisted  of  work  and  of  women.  But 
he  had  another  passion  nearly,  if  not  quite,  as  strong  as 

66 


'"V     1 


"  Gavarni  " 
(Guillaume  .Sulpice  Chevalier) 


either  of  the  others.  This  was  abstract  mathematical 
science,  which  he  claimed  was  the  most  immaterial  of 
all  the  arts. 

"Even  in  music,"  he  said,  "there  is  the  beating  of  the 
sonorous  waves  against  the  tympanum.  Matheinatics 
is  the  mute  music  of  numbers  ! ' ' 

In  1851,  the  Goncourts'  cousin,  the  Comte  de  Ville- 
deuil,  a  young  man  just  out  of  college,  came  to  Paris, 
where  he  started  a  paper  called  L'Eclair,  with  the 
collaboration  of  Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt,  then 
twenty-nine  and  twenty-two  years  old  respectively. 
Meeting  with  little  success  —  finding,  indeed,  the  great- 
est difficulty  in  keeping  afloat  —  they  decided,  if  possi- 
ble, to  interest  Gavarni  in  their  undertaking. 

It  seemed  an  audacious  idea.  The  artist  was  then  at 
the  very  zenith  of  his  great  reputation.  The  three  kins- 
men were,  on  the  contrary,  just  beginning  to  make  their 
modest  debut  in  the  world  of  letters,  the  Goncourts  hav- 
ing published,  at  this  time,  but  one,  unsuccessful,  novel. 
But  perhaps  it  was  their  very  audacity  that  pleased  the 
older  man.  At  any  rate,  when  they  met  at  dinner,  for 
the  first  time,  at  the  Maison  d'Or,  he  proposed  for  their 
publication  the  series  of  the  Manteau  d'Arlequin. 

Furthermore,  he  signified  a  desire  to  extend  the  ac- 
quaintance thus  begun,  by  inviting  them  to  call.  This 
they  did  a  few  days  later,  and  Gavarni  showed  them 
through  the  old  house,  with  its  grim  wall  and  rusty 
grills  on  the  street,  which  had  been  a  counterfeiters'  den 
under  the  Directoire.  Later  it  had  been  acquired  by 
Josephine's  modiste,  Leroy,  who  used  the  iron  chamber, 
where  the  false  coin  had  been  manufactured,  to  press 
Napoleon's  mantles,  embroidered  with  golden  bees. 

To  this  house  they  returned  many  times.    There,  in 

67 


his  cheerful  garden  atelier,  they  watched  the  master  at 
work  and  hstened  while  he  told  stories  of  Balzac,  Dau- 
mier,  and  others  with  whom  he  had  been  associated  in 
his  earlier  years  or  while,  in  pungent  aphorisms  that  had 
the  epigrammatic  concision  and  grace  of  the  legends 
which  he  traced  beneath  his  pictures,  he  expressed  his 
philosophy  of  art  and  of  life. 

Once  he  dwelt  upon  his  indifference  towards  the  fait 
accompli  in  art. 

''I  do  a  thing,"  he  said,  "only  because  of  its  difficul- 
ties, and  because  it  is  not  easy  to  do.  Take  my  garden 
for  example.  When  it  is  done,  I  shall  gladly  make  a  gift 
of  it  to  some  one.  There  are  those  who  paint  landscapes. 
I  amuse  myself  by  making  landscapes  in  relief.  Well, 
what  is  it  you  want  me  to  do  with  a  design  once  it 
is  finished?  There  is  nothing  left  to  do  but  to  give  it 
away." 

Again,  speaking  of  the  theatre,  he  asked :  — 

"Have  you  ever  watched,  not  the  stage,  but  the 
theatre  itself,  during  a  performance?  I  do  not  know  how, 
after  having  seen  that  spectacle,  one  has  the  courage 
to  go  on  addressing  the  public.  .  .  .  Man  at  least  makes 
the  acquaintance  of  a  book  in  solitude.  But  a  play  is  ap- 
preciated by  a  raw  mass  of  humanity,  an  agglomerated 
stupidity." 

Then,  leaving  this  subject,  after  a  silence  in  which 
he  remained  for  a  moment  lost  in  his  reflections,  he 
cried: — 

"Ah!  scientific  research — ^  that  is  a  fine  monomania 
for  you.  Now,  whether  I  make  one  lithograph  more  or 
less  does  not  count  greatly  for  my  renown.  But,  instead, 
if  there  were  a  theorem  which  bore  my  name  —  hein, 
that  would  be  something  like,  would  it  not?" 


Ill 

At  Gavarni's  occasionally  they  found  other  artists. 
Once  it  was  Bracquemond,  with  whom  the  master  of  the 
house  was  engaged  in  tripotant  "some  eaux-fortes  .  .  . 
in  sketching  with  the  point  on  the  copper  a  series  of 
celebrities,  among  which  he  shows  us  a  Balzac  of  ad- 
mirable workmanship."  Then  all  four,  the  day's  work 
done,  went  off  to  dine  at  a  little  restaurant. 

Another  time  it  was  Constantin  Guys,  the  staff  artist 
of  the  Illustrated  London  News,  who  had  reported  the 
Crimean  War  so  brilliantly  for  that  paper. 

"A  little  man  with  a  face  expressing  energy,  with 
gray  moustaches,  with  the  aspect  of  a  grognard;  limping 
a  trifle  as  he  walked,  and  continually  drawing  up  his 
sleeves  with  the  flat  of  his  hand  on  his  bony  arms;  dif- 
fuse in  his  talk,  trailing  off  into  parentheses,  zigzagging 
from  one  idea  to  another,  getting  off  the  track,  lost,  but 
finding  himself  again  and  regaining  your  attention  with 
a  metaphorical  bit  of  gutter-slang,  a  word  borrowed 
from  the  terminology  of  German  thinkers,  a  technical 
term  from  some  art  or  industry,  and  always  holding  .you 
under  the  impact  of  his  highly  colored  speech  which 
made  everything,  as  it  were,  visible  to  the  eyes.  And 
there  were  a  thousand  souvenirs  that  he  evoked  during 
this  walk,  casting  among  them,  from  time  to  time,  hand- 
fuls  of  ironies,  of  sketches,  of  landscapes,  of  bloody, 
disemboweled  cities  perforated  with  bullets,  of  hospi- 
tals where  the  rats  gnawed  the  wounded. 

"Then,  on  the  reverse  of  this,  as  in  an  album,  or  as,  on 
the  back  of  a  drawing  Ijy  Decamps,  you  find  a  thought 
by  Balzac,  there  issue  from  the  mouth  of  this  devil  of  a 


man,  social  silhouettes,  apergus  on  the  French  species, 
or  on  the  English  species,  all  quite  new,  which  have  not 
grown  stale  in  a  book  —  two-minute  satires,  pamphlets 
in  a  single  word,  a  comparative  philosophy  of  the  na- 
tional genius  of  peoples." 

Both  Bracquemond  and  Guys  henceforth  became 
members  of  the  Goncourts'  circle,  the  former  making  the 
well-known  head  of  Edmond,  which  is  one  of  the  greatest 
of  modern  portrait  etchings. 

Meanwhile  this  circle  was  becoming  extended  on  the 
literary  side.  The  stream  of  novels  and  eighteenth-cen- 
tury studies  that  flowed  from  the  pens  of  these  inde- 
fatigable brothers,  began  to  attract  attention.  They  had 
already  met  and  joined  forces  with  Gautier,  Banville, 
and  Flaubert,  when  one  day,  in  1861,  Sainte-Beuve,  the 
Grand  Sultan  of  Criticism,  came  to  call  on  them. 

Through  the  Goncourts,  Sainte-Beuve  and  Gavarni 
soon  entered  into  closer  relations,  with  important  re- 
sults for  the  history  of  French  literature  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  XlXth  Century.  For  the  following  year, 
these  two  men,  who  conceived  a  relish  for  each  other's 
conversation ,  despite  a  constant  malentendu  on  the  sub- 
ject of  art,  organized  at  Magny's  a  fortnightly  dinner 
destined  to  become  the  last  great  cenacle  of  the  century. 

It  began  modestly  enough,  with  only  six  members: 
Gavarni,  Sainte-Beuve,  Veyne,  de  Chennevierres,  and 
the  two  Goncourts.  But  it  grew  rapidly,  and  its  mem- 
bership soon  came  to  include  such  representative  think- 
ers and  men  of  letters  as  Taine,  Renan,  Gautier,  Flau- 
bert, Saint-Victor,  Turgenieff,  Sherer,  and  the  great 
synthetic  chemist,  Berthelot. 

Here,  at  one  table,  surrounded  by  men  of  two  genera- 
tions, the  great  tradition  of  French  letters  may  be  said 

70 


Bracquemond.     Edmond  de  Goncourt 
In  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston 


to  have  been  directly  continued.  For  here,  from  the  dy- 
ing embers  of  Romanticism,  emerged  the  new  spirit  of 
Naturahsm,  of  which  Flaubert  was  the  Paraclete,  Taine 
the  prophet,  and  the  Goncourts  themselves  were  the 
apostles  and  pioneers  —  also,  as  they  liked  to  think,  the 
"martyrs." 

This  celebrated  and  epoch-making  cenacle,  continued 
until  1870,  when,  of  the  six  original  members,  three  — 
Gavarni,  Sainte-Beuve,  and  Jules  de  Goncourt  —  died. 
It  was  revived  after  the  war,  in  1872,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  hundredth  performance  of  Hugo's  Ruy  Bias,  but 
with  only  indifferent  success.  And,  for  the  reader  of  the 
Journal,  interest,  after  1870,  rather  tends  to  center  in 
the  younger  group  which  gradually  grew  up  around 
Edmond  de  Goncourt. 

In  this  the  leaders  were  Daudet  and  Zola.^  The  latter 
brought  with  him  his  co-disciples  of  Les  soirees  de 
Medan  —  Maupassant,  Huysmans,  Ceard,  Hennique, 
Alexis  —  and  the  gatherings  in  Goncourt 's  Grenier 
were  augmented  from  time  to  time,  by  a  number  of 
other  writers  —  Octave  Mirbeau,  Abel  Hermant,  Jean 
Lorrain,  the  Belgian  poet-novelist  Georges  Rodenbach, 
Lucien  Descaves,  Margueritte,  Rosny,  Charpentier,  and 
many  others,  of  all  literarj^  generations  right  down  to 
the  very  latest  represented  ]:)y  Leon  Daudet,  son  of  the 
author  of  Sapho  and  Tartarin. 

IV 

From  about  1870,  new  names  of  artists  begin  to  ap- 
pear in  the  Journal,  also.    There  is  Ziem,  for  example, 

'  Goncourt,  Flaubert,  Turgcnieff,  Daudot  and  Zola  soon  formed  the 
monthly  "  Diner  des  cinq." 

71 


the  painter  of  Venice,  who  first  captures  Goncourt's  at- 
tention because  he  has  studied  on  the  spot  the  perspec- 
tives of  Giotto,  and  can  compare  the  procedcs  of  the 
primitifs  with  those  of  the  Japanese  artists. 

Then,  of  special  interest  to  the  future  author  of  mono- 
graphs on  Hokusai  and  Utamaro,  there  is  a  real  Japan- 
ese painter,  Watanobe-Sei,  who  gives  a  demonstration 
of  the  traditional  methods  of  his  race,  by  executing  a 
great  kakemono  at  Burty's  before  a  select  assistance. 

Burty  also  takes  him  to  see  the  young  sculptor,  Cros, 
who  is  maldng  a  wax  figure  of  his  daughter.  Felicien 
Rops  (an  old  acquaintance,  this  one)  comes  to  lunch 
with  him.  He  calls  on  Marcellin  (a  former  classmate), 
caricaturist  and  director  of  La  Vie  Parisienne,  who 
has  asked  him  to  write  an  article  on  Gavarni.  He  spends 
pleasant  evenings  with  young  Pierre  Gavarni  and  his 
wife.  He  meets  the  two  illustrators,  of  such  unequal 
value  as  artists,  Vierge  and  Dore,  and  he  talks  at  Bra- 
bant's with  that  pauvre  Fromeniin,  so  soon  to  die,  his 
work  unfinished,  who  confides  to  him  that,  if  he  had  no 
one  dependent  u])on  him,  he  would  "chuck"  painting 
altogether,  and  turn  his  attention  entirely  to  literature. 

A  frequent  companion  is  Claudius  Popelin,  a  skilled 
art-worker,  also  a  poet,  who  executed  a  portrait  of  Jules 
de  Goncourt  in  enamel.  Edmond  himself  goes  one  day 
to  the  studio  of  an  unknown  artist  whose  dry-points  he 
has  admired  at  Burty's  and  who  has  offered  to  make  his 
portrait  in  the  same  medium.  Shortly  after,  Bracque- 
mond  makes  his  great  etching  of  the  writer.  And  a 
third  portrait  of  the  period  is  the  one,  life-size,  made  by 
the  Neapolitan  De  Nittis,  whom  Goncourt  loved,  and 
whom  he  called  "the  true  landscapist  of  the  Parisian 
street." 

72 


By  1880  Paris  was  in  the  full  flood  of  Impressionism, 
and  Goncourt,  quick  to  discern  the  new  character  of 
the  period,  as  he  was  to  sympathize  with  every  new 
manifestation  of  the  human  spirit,  exclaims:  — 

"Ah!  if  I  were  younger,  the  fine  novel  there  would  be 
to  write  again  on  the  world  of  art,  making  it  altogether 
different  from  Manctte  Salmon,  with  a  painter  of  the 
Avenue  de  Villiers,  a  Bohemian  painter,  living  in  the 
great  world  and  in  high  life,  like  Forain,  a  reasoner  on 
art,  in  the  fashion  of  Degas  and  all  the  varieties  of  the 
Impressionist  artist." 

We  have  seen  how  the  latter's  modernist  programme 
appealed  to  him.  But  while  he  admires  the  former,  he  is 
far  from  seeing  Forain  a  real  successor  to  Gavarni.  He 
had  none  of  that  artist's  amenity  of  spirit  mingled  with 
the  sharpness  and  acerbity  of  his  satire,  which  spares  no 
shame  or  suffering  in  its  cruel  disdain:  — 

"Ah !  the  ferocious  legend  of  Forain ! "  he  cries.  " No, 
Gavarni  in  his  legends  has  not  this  implacability,  and 
the  sayings  of  Vireloque  are  tempered  by  a  philosophy 
at  once  elevated  and  kind-hearted." 

For  the  rest  Goncourt,  who  visits  Forain  in  his  studio 
and  notes  a  resemblance  to  Daumier  in  his  method  of 
attack,  seems  somewhat  undecided  as  to  whether  this 
painter  of  Parisian  life  is  at  his  best  when  expressing 
his  ideas  on  the  lithographic  stone,  or  when  he  is  pro- 
jecting them  through  the  sublimated  delicacies  of  his 
subtly  ironic  speech. 

It  is  not  until  1886  that  Goncourt  meets  Rodin.  It  is 
then  Bracquemond  who  takes  the  writer  to  call  on  the 
great  sculptor:  — 

"He  is  a  man  with  coarse  plebeian  features,  clear  eyes 
bUnking  beneath  sickly  red  lids,  a  long  yellowish  beard, 

73 


hail-  cropped  close,  a  round  head  expressing  a  gentle 
and  obstinate  stubbornness  —  a  man  such  as  I  imagine 
were  the  disciples  of  Jesus  Christ." 

The  year  following,  Geffroy  Ijrings  Raffaelli  to  call  on 
Goncourt  (ostensibly  to  see  the  latter's  drawings),  and 
henceforth  these  two  artists,  Rodin  and  Raffaelli,  be- 
come inmost  members  of  the  latter's  circle.  Others  are 
Carriere,  whom  Goncourt  calls  "a  crepuscular  Velas- 
quez," Alfred  Stevens,  the  Belgian  feminist  painter,  and 
James  Tissot,  after  his  return  from  Jerusalem  where  he 
had  gone  to  make  the  celebrated  series  of  paintings  rep- 
resenting Bible  scenes  in  the  Holy  Land. 

Tissot  had  already,  some  years  before,  illustrated 
Goncourt's  novel  La  Fille  Elisa.  He,  too,  had  origin- 
ally aspired  to  interpret  the  chic  graces  of  the  Parisian 
woman.  But  in  1893  he  brought  to  see  Goncourt  one 
who  far  surpassed  anything  he  himself  had  achieved  in 
that  feminine  field.  This  was  Paul  Helleu,  a  young  man 
"with  feverish  eyes,  a  tormented  physiognomy,  to- 
gether with  the  skin  and  the  l)lack  locks  of  a  crow." 

"He  has  just  made  a  dry-point  of  me,"  writes  Gon- 
court, adding  that  Helleu  was  very  much  frightened, 
having  dreamed  all  night  that  he  had  made  a  failure 
of  the  portrait,  and  that  to  get  his  hand  in,  —  since  he 
drew  only  women,  —  he  had  tried  to  sketch  himself. 

"He  works  on  uncovered  copper  with  a  diamond 
point  which  has  a  sharper  turn  on  the  metal  than  the 
steel,  and  boasts  that  he  can  make  a  figure  8.  This 
diamond  point,  which  comes  from  England,  is,  he  says, 
the  object  of  envy  of  all  contemporary  etchers,  who 
turn  diplomats  to  borrow  it  in  order  to  get  one  like  it 
made  for  themselves  by  a  Parisian  jeweller." 

Goncourt  was  now  more  than  seventy  years  old,  and 

74 


Hellei;.     Edmond  de  Goncocrt 


it  was  becoming  the  fashion  to  soHcit  the  privilege  of 
making  his  portrait.  Raffaelh  had  ah-eady  made  a  great 
full-length  for  the  Exposition,  and  now  foreign  artists 
actually  visited  Paris  for  the  express  purpose  of  fixing 
on  paper,  or  on  the  copper-plate,  their  impression  of  his 
aristocratic  features  and  rather  melancholy  expression. 
Thus  Will  Rothenstein  crossed  over  from  London  in 
connection  with  a  projected  work  entitled,  Edmond  and 
Jules  de  Goncourt  {With  Letters  and  Leaves  from  their 
Journal),  and  Zilcken  came  down  from  Holland  to  make 
a  characteristic  dry-point;  while  at  home,  the  French 
illustrator,  Frederic  Regamey  included  Goncourt  in  a 
series  of  portraits  appearing  in  Le  Matin,  and  the  cari- 
caturist, Willette,  made  a  sketch  of  him  for  the  menu 
of  his  "Jubilee"  banquet.  This  was  held  on  February 
22,  1895.  A  year  and  a  half  later  (July  16,  1896)  he 
died. 


VI 

SOME    FREXCII    ARTISTS    DURIXG    THE 
SIEGE    AND    COMMUNE 

I 

tDMOND  DE  GONCOURT  was  in  the  print- 
room  of  the  Bibhotheque  Nationale  when  the 
war  broke  out  in  August,  1870.  Through  the 
window,  he  tells  us  in  the  lively,  impression- 
istic ])ages  of  his  Journal  du  Siege,  he  saw  people  running 
in  the  Rue  Vivienne.  Instinctively  he  pushed  from  him 
the  illustrated  work  he  was  examining  and,  reaching 
the  street,  ran  with  the  crowd. 

Whether  he  returned  later  and  finished  his  perusal, 
he  does  not  say.  Profoundly  impressionable,  almost 
neurasthenic,  this  literary  maniac,  as  he  has  been  called, 
seems,  on  the  whole,  to  have  lived  in  a  state  of  sur- 
excitation  that  must  have  rendered  anything  like  con- 
secutive work  on  indifferent  subjects  difficult,  if  not 
impossible. 

But  while  he  himself  apparently  spent  most  of  his 
time  wandering  about  the  streets,  meeting  people,  and 
making  observations,  there  were,  no  doubt,  those  cap- 
able, like  Goethe  at  Weimar  and  Kant  at  Konigsberg, 
in  similar  circumstances,  of  preserving  their  personal 
detachment  in  the  midst  of  public  misfortune. 


Indeed,  one  is  struck,  in  the  Journal,  by  the  account 
of  Zola's  call  on  Goncourt  towards  the  end  of  August, 
when  the  tide  of  French  fortunes  on  the  frontier  was  at 
its  lowest  ebb.  The  future  author  of  Le  Debacle  talked 
exclusively  of  himself,  sketching  ''a  series  of  novels  he 
wished  to  write,  an  epic  in  ten  volumes  involving  the 
natural  and  social  history  of  a  family  ,  .  .  with  the  ex- 
position of  temperaments,  characters,  vices,  and  vir- 
tues, as  developed  by  diverse  environments  and  differ- 
entiated like  the  parts  of  a  garden,  'with  sun  here, 
shade  there.'" 

Already,  it  is  seen,  the  fortunes  of  the  Rougon-Mac- 
quart  family  were  of  far  more  acute  personal  concern  to 
Zola  than  the  fate  of  the  French  armies  under  Mac- 
Mahon  and  Bazaine. 

Other  writers  appear  in  Goncourt's  gossiping  pages,  to 
create  a  semblance  of  literary  life  in  a  city  which  starva- 
tion was  already  beginning  to  stare  in  the  face.  There 
were,  for  example,  those  who,  like  Renan,  Saint- Victor, 
Neffter,  and  the  great  chemist,  Berthelot,  met  every 
week  with  Goncourt  at  Brebant's  on  the  Boulevard  for 
dinner  and  discussion.  There  was  also  the  old,  or  elderly, 
Theophile  Gautier,  returning  "broke"  from  beyond  the 
Swiss  frontier,  and  bemoaning  his  fate,  which  was  al- 
ways to  be  the  victim  of  revolutions.  And  there  was 
Victor  Hugo,  whom  the  fall  of  the  Empire  had  at  last 
allowed  to  return  from  his  long  exile  on  the  island  of 
Guernsey. 

Of  the  younger  Parisian  artists  and  men  of  letters, 
those  fit  for  military  service  were  for  the  most  part 
already  with  the  colors  or,  like  the  debonnair  Catulle 
Mendes  —  who  came  dressed  in  the  uniform  of  a  volun- 
teer to  bid  Goncourt  good-bye  on  his  way  to  the  front  — 


were  rapidly  going  there.  Of  these  death  took  heavy 
toll;  and  among  others,  it  cut  off  in  his  earliest  prime  one 
in  whom  Gautier  declared  French  art  had  lost  its  unique 
hope  of  renewal. 

"  I  go  this  morning  to  the  funeral  of  Regnault,"  writes 
Goncourt  under  date  of  Friday,  January  27,  1871,  in  the 
Journal.  "There  is  an  enormous  crowd.  We  lament 
above  the  body  of  this  talented  youth,  the  burial  of 
France.  It  is  horrible,  this  equality  before  the  brutal 
death  dealt  by  rifle  or  cannon,  which  strikes  genius  or 
imbecility,  the  precious  life  like  that  which  is  without 
worth." 

Gautier,  who,  like  Goncourt,  has  also  given  us  his 
Tableaux  de  Siege,  describes  in  a  croquis  his  ineeting 
with  Regnault  for  the  first  time  only  a  few  days  before 
the  fatal  event.  It  was  in  the  former's  poor  lodgings  in 
Paris,  to  which  the  artist,  with  all  his  military  accoutre- 
ments, was  brought  by  a  common  friend  acquainted 
with  the  long-standing  wish  of  the  two  men  to  meet  each 
other.  Not  noticing  the  lack  of  chairs,  the  painter,  just 
back  from  North  Africa,  sat  on  the  bed  as  on  a  divan, 
talking  of  Tangier  and  turning  the  pages  of  a  complete 
copy  of  Goya's  Los  Desastres  de  la  Guerra,  which 
Gautier  had  recently  borrowed  from  Philippe  Burty. 

There  are  those  who  think  that,  in  times  of  great 
national  stress  or  crisis,  and  specifically  in  wartime,  a 
way  should  be  found  to  relieve  the  creative  artist,  the 
leader  of  the  intellectual  elite,  from  his  share  of  the 
common  responsibility.  The  man  of  genius  himself, 
however,  has  rarely  taken  this  narrow  view  of  his  human 
obligations. 

Regnault  held  the  Prix  de  Rome,  and  was  thus  exempt 
from  military  service.  But,  unwilling  to  profit  by  such  a 

78 


Regnault.     Automedon  witu  the  Houses  of  Achilles 

Size  of  the  original  painting,  10  feet  6  inches  X  10  feet  11%  inches 

Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston 


privilege  —  feeling,  as  all  high-minded  men  must  at 
such  a  time,  that  genius,  like  nobility,  imposes  superior 
obligations  —  he  abandoned  the  big  studio  he  had  just 
built  at  Tangier,  and  returned  to  Paris.  Enlisting  as  a 
private,  he  was  offered  the  rank  of  sous-lieutenant,  which 
he  refused  characteristically  on  the  ground  that  "his 
example  would  be  more  useful  than  his  command." 

"Having  decided  to  stand  the  fatigues  and  troubles  of 
the  soldier's  trade,  without  flinching  or  seeking  to  avoid 
a  single  one,"  he  wrote  his  captain,  —  "  having  de- 
cided to  be  the  first  at  every  task  and  the  first  under 
fire,  I  hope  to  encourage  by  my  example  those  of  my 
comrades  who  might  be  tempted  to  complain  or  to 
hesitate." 

There  was  the  usual  protracted  period  of  inaction 
and  suspense,  hardest  of  all  to  bear.  At  length  came 
the  order  to  advance  to  the  outposts.  Two  days  later 
the  battle  began  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris. 

"The  day  wore  on,"  writes  M.  Roger  Marx,  who  bet- 
ter than  any  one  else  has  told  the  story,  "and  the  strug- 
gle was  still  desperate  before  the  wall  of  the  Pare  de 
Burzenval,  where  Regnault  had  fought  since  dawn.  The 
ground  was  strewn  with  corpses,  and  still  the  wall  was 
not  won.  The  bugle  sounds.  It  is  the  signal  for  retreat, 
the  heartrending  order  to  descend  once  more  the  slopes 
up  which  they  had  swept  that  morning  with  such  enthu- 
siasm. The  troops  obey,  but  slowly,  with  sudden  returns 
of  rage.  Regnault  cannot  decide  to  leave.  It  galls  him 
to  abandon  the  fight  before  firing  his  last  cartridge." 

Suddenly  his  friend,  Georges  Clairin,  who  had  scarcely 
been  separated  from  his  side  all  day,  missed  him  from 
the  ranks.  Anxious,  he  made  inquiries.  But  it  was  not 
until  they  had  returned  to  the  shelter  of  the  bastions 

79 


that  he  found  a  soldier  who  had  heard  Regnault  say: 
''Le  temps  de  Idcher  mon  dernier  coup  de  fusil,  et  je  vous 
rejoins,"  and  had  seen  him  fall  behind. 

As  soon  as  possible  a  search  was  instituted,  and  the 
body  of  the  artist  was  found  where  he  had  fallen  on  his 
face,  a  bullet  through  the  temple, 

II 

''Art  has  paid  its  debt  to  the  fatherland  without 
stint  in  this  fatal  war,"  wrote  Gautier.  "Its  dearest 
children  have  fallen  in  the  flower  of  their  age,  full  of 
daring,  of  genius,  of  iron  resolution,  and  the  future  of 
painting  is  perhaps  for  a  long  time  compromised  by  their 
death." 

Another  of  these  plus  chers  enfants  was  Victor  Giraud, 
who  came  of  a  family  of  painters.  Dying  of  fever  con- 
tracted in  camp,  he  expressed  a  noble  envy  of  Regnault, 
who  gained  his  glorious  death  on  the  field  of  honor. 

Past  active  military  age,  Puvis  de  Chavannes  took  no 
part  in  the  actual  fighting  about  Paris,  but  he  did  guard 
duty  with  the  others  on  the  ramparts,  where  he  received 
his  inspiration  for  two  very  remarkable  compositions. 

"Monsieur  Puvis  de  Chavannes,"  writes  Gautier, 
"has  brought  back  from  the  ramparts  a  superb  design 
which  he  has  had  lithographed,  one  that  recalls  the  grand 
but  simple  manner  of  the  artist  to  whom  we  owe  the 
magnificent  frescoes  .  .  .  la  Guerre,  la  Paix,  le  Travail, 
and  le  Repos. 

"A  slender,  graceful  woman,  in  a  long  mourning  gown, 
her  hair  arranged  like  a  widow's,  her  right  hand  resting 
on  a  rifle  with  fixed  bayonet,  her  left  uplifted,  her  face 
less  than  profile,  stands  on  the  platform  of  a  bastion. 

80 


Puvis  DE  Chavannes.     "  La  ville  db  Paris  investie  confie  a 
l'aiu  son  appel  a  la  France" 

Rpproducod  from  the  painting  by  permission  of  Mrs.  James  R.  Jesup 
and  Mrs.  Harry  Harkness  Flagler 


Puvis  DE  Chavannes.     "Echappe  a  la  serre  ennemie  le  message 

ATTENDU    EXALTE    LE    CCEUR    DE    LA    FifeRE    CITE  " 

Keproduccd  from  the  painting  by  permission  of  Mrs.  James  R.  Jesup 
and  Mrs.  Harry  Hurkness  Flagler 


The  folds  of  her  black  dress,  breaking  at  her  feet  like 
the  sharp  folds  of  Gothic  drapery,  make  her  a  pedestal 
which  elevates  her  and  adds  to  her  elegance. 

"A  little  below  her  are  seen  cannon,  tents,  gabion- 
nades,  pyramids  of  cannon-balls.  From  a  fort  whose 
silhouette  shows  it  to  be  Mont-Valerien,  smoke  drifts  in 
horizontal  streaks,  and  in  a  coi'ner  of  the  sky,  already 
blurred  by  the  distance,  fades  the  spherical  l)ulk  of  a 
balloon,  sole  means  of  communication  now  left  us  with 
the  outside  world. 

"The  symbolic  figure,  which  might  be  real  and  repre- 
sent a  portrait  as  well  as  a  generalization,  follows  the 
balloon  with  a  look  of  love  and  anxiety.  This  frail  bark 
bears  the  burden  of  a  great  hope. 

"A  legend  is  written  at  the  Ixjttom  of  the  picture:  • — • 

"La  ville  de  Paris  investie  confic  a  Vair  son  appel  a  la  France. 

"This  touching  figure,"  adds  Gautier,  "demands  as 
its  pendant:  'Paris  servant  coritre  son  cceur  la  coJomhe 
messagere  qui  apporte  la  bonne  nouvelle! '  For  the  correct 
expression,  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  has  but  to  recall 
Mademoiselle  Favart  reciting  '  Les  Pigeons  de  la  Repub- 
lique,^  in  her  gown  lustred  like  the  plumage  of  a  turtle- 
dove. It  [this  second  design]  will  be  his  distraction  when, 
next  on  guard,  he  sees,  speeding  across  the  sky,  our 
feathered  postmen  pursued,  but  not  caught,  by  the  post- 
men of  Monsieur  de  Bismarck." 

From  the  designs  thus  described,  Puvis  de  Chavannes 
executed  two  noble  panel  paintings  in  brown  mono- 
chrome, which  have  had  a  singular  history.  In  1873  or 
1874  they  were  sent  to  America  as  gifts  to  a  lottery  organ- 
ized to  aid  the  sufferers  from  the  Chicago  fire,  and  were 
lost  sight  of.    They  have,  however,  quite  recently  come 


to  light  again,  and  are  herewith  reproduced  for  the  first 
time  since  their  rediscovery. 

Ill 

"One  of  my  friends,"  writes  Gautier  in  December, 
"came  to  find  me  yesterday  to  take  me  to  Bastion  85 
where,  he  said,  I  should  see  something  interesting;  but 
there  was  need  of  haste,  for  night  comes  quickly  these 
sad  December  days,  and,  besides,  a  change  of  tempera- 
ture might  destroy  the  object  of  our  pilgrimage.  So  we 
started  off  in  haste,  cursing  the  slowness  of  our  poor 
steed  which  slipped  on  the  glazed  surface  of  the  snow 
...  as  we  penetrated  the  deserted  streets  of  the  quarter 
beyond  the  Luxembourg  and  the  Observatoire.  .  .  . 

"We  pursued  our  way  past  the  great  gray  walls  pla- 
carded with  dingy  posters,  bizarre  old  abodes  given  over 
to  the  industries  the  elegant  city  banishes  to  its  extreme 
outer  limits,  barracks  built  of  pine  boards,  hospitals  or 
shelters  for  the  troops,  dismantled  enclosures  of  a  tone 
which  recalled  that  of  drawings  on  tinted  paper,  rein- 
forced with  China  white,  the  clinging  patches  of  snow 
representing  the  touches  of  gouache.  .  .  . 

"Arriving  at  the  road  which  runs  round  the  ramparts, 
we  abandoned  our  fiacre,  whose  horse  could  go  no  fur- 
ther, and  my  friend  led  me  to  the  spot  where  we  were  to 
find  the  curiosity  which  he  had  promised  me,  and  which, 
in  fact,  was  well  worth  the  journey  to  the  bastion. 

"The  7th  company  of  the  19th  Battalion  of  the  Na- 
tional Guard  contains  many  painters  and  sculptors  who, 
soon  bored  by  the  life,  are  eager  to  find  some  better 
occupation  for  their  leisure,  from  one  turn  of  sentry 
duty  to  another,  than  the  eternal  drawing  of  corks. 

82 


Falguiere.     La  Resistance 

Etched  by  Bracquemond  from  the  statue  in  snow 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  8%  X  6V4  inches 

The  New  York  Public  Ijihrary 


Pipe,  cigar,  cigarette  help  them  to  burn  time;  discus- 
sions on  art  and  poHtics  occasionally  kill  more  of  it,  but 
one  cannot  be  forever  smoking,  talking,  or  sleeping. 

''Now  the  last  three  or  four  days  a  considerable  quan- 
tity of  snow  has  fallen.  This  is  already  half  melted  in  the 
heart  of  Paris,  but  it  still  lies  intact  on  the  ramparts 
where  it  is  more  exposed  to  the  cold  wind  which  comes 
from  the  open  country.  And  as  there  is  always  in  the 
artist,  whatever  his  age,  an  element  of  childishness  and 
gaminerie,  the  sight  of  this  lovely  white  covering  at 
once  suggested  a  snow-fight  as  a  welcome  distraction. 
Two  sides  were  formed,  and  active  hands  had  soon  con- 
verted into  projectiles  the  frozen,  glittering  flakes  from 
the  slopes  of  the  talus. 

"The  battle  was  about  to  begin  when  a  voice  cried: 
'Would  n't  it  be  better  to  make  a  statue  with  all  these 
snowballs?'  The  idea  made  an  immediate  appeal,  for 
MM.  Falguiere,  Moulin,  and  Chope  happened  to  be  on 
guard  that  day.  They  erected  a  sort  of  framework  of 
cobblestones,  and  the  artists  —  whom  M.  Chope  gladly 
served  as  assistant  ■ —  set  to  work,  receiving  from  every 
side  the  hard-packed  masses  of  snow  passed  up  to  them 
by  their  comrades." 

M.  Falguiere  made  a  statue  of  Resistance,  and  M. 
Moulin  a  colossal  bust  of  la  Republique.  The  former  was 
"placed  below  a  parapet,  not  far  from  the  guard  house, 
on  the  edge  of  the  chemin  de  ronde,  and  facing  the  coun- 
try. The  delicate  artist  to  whom  we  owe  the  Vainqueur 
en  combat  de  coqs,  le  Petit  Martyre,  and  Ophelia,  has  not 
given  his  Resistance  those  robust,  almost  virile  forms, 
those  great  muscles,  d  la  Michelange,  that,  at  first,  the 
subject  seems  to  demand.  He  has  understood  that  it 
is  here  a  question  of  a  moral,  rather  than  a  physical 

83 


resistance,  and  instead  of  personifj'ing  it  under  the  traits 
of  a  sort  of  female  Hercules  ready  for  the  fray,  he  has 
given  her  the  frail  grace  of  a  Parisienne  of  our  own  day. 

'^La  Resistance,  seated  or,  rather,  leaning  against  a 
rock,  crosses  her  arms  on  her  nude  breast  with  an  air  of 
indomitable  resolution.  Her  slender  feet,  the  toes  con- 
tracted, seem  determined  to  take  root  in  the  very  soil. 
With  a  haughty  movement  of  her  head,  she  has  tossed 
back  her  hair,  as  if  to  exhibit  to  the  foe  her  charming 
face,  more  terrible  than  that  of  the  Medusa.  On  her  lips 
plays  the  light  smile  of  a  heroic  disdain,  and,  in  the  slight 
frown  upon  her  brow,  is  concentrated  the  obstinacy  of 
an  eternal  interdict. 

"At  the  base  of  this  improvised  statue,  M.  Falguiere 
has  had  the  modesty  to  write  in  black  letters  on  a  bit  of 
board :  La  Resistance.  The  inscription  was  not  necessary. 
Anyone  would  interpret  a  figure  expressing  so  stubborn 
an  energy,  even  if  unaccompanied  by  its  snow  cannon. 

"It  is  sad  to  think  that  the  first  warm  breath  will 
melt  this  masterpiece  and  make  it  disappear,  but  the 
artist  has  promised,  as  soon  as  he  is  off  duty,  to  execute 
a  sketch  of  wax  or  clay  in  order  to  conserve  its  ex- 
pression and  movement." 

Moulin's  statue  was  a  colossal  bust  of  La  Republique. 
Placed  on  the  highest  part  of  the  parapet,  Gautier 
writes,  its  "gaze,  beyond  the  bastion,  seems  to  pene- 
trate the  very  depths  of  the  country.  But  it  is  not  from 
that  side  that  it  should  be  seen:  the  right  place  for  a 
view  is  the  chemin  de  ronde,  at  the  foot  of  the  talus. 
While  the  artist  was  working  at  the  head  of  his  Repub- 
lique  ...  his  friends  called  to  him  from  below :  '  Rajoute 
le  front,  soiitiens  la  joue,  avance  le  menton,  remets  de  la 
neige  au  bonnet ! '  And  the  artist,  perched  on  his  parapet 

84 


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Moulin.     La  Republique 

Etched  by  Bracqiiemond  from  the  bust  in  snow 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  8%  X  6i.i  inches 

The  New  York  Public  Library 


like  a  Greek  artisan  on  the  summit  of  a  pediment,  lis- 
tened to  the  indications  and  criticisms  till  the  bust, 
little  by  little,  took  on  a  majestic  and  terrible  beauty." 

IV 

Whether  or  not  cither  Moulin  or  Falguiere  actually 
made  sketches  in  more  permanent  material  of  their 
grandiose  conceptions  I  do  not  know;  but  an  interesting 
record  of  them  has  been  preserved  in  two  plates  etched 
by  Bracquemond. 

"I  have  a  friend,"  writes  Gautier  in  still  another 
tableau,  "who  also  turns  to  account  the  leisure  of  the 
rampart,  and  who  etches  with  a  strange  originality  the 
barbarous  side  of  war  as  it  appears  contrasted  with  the 
refinements  of  our  modern  civilization." 

Doubtless  this  was  Braccjuemond,  whose  own  bat- 
talion was  stationed  at  the  very  bastion,  85,  which  had 
thus  been  turned  into  a  veritable  Musee  de  Neiye,  and 
who  was,  therefore,  presumably  Gautier's  guide  on  the 
above  occasion.  At  all  events,  Bracciuemond  published 
three  years  after  the  war,  in  1874,  a  series  of  five  etch- 
ings dealing  with  the  Siege,  numbers  four  and  five  of 
which  preserve,  respectively,  the  forms  of  Falguiere's 
La  Resistance,  and  Moulin's  bust  of  La  Repuhlique. 
Another,  number  two,  gives  a  view  of  BicHre  et  les 
Hautes-Bruyeres,  par  un  temps  de  neige,  which  we  might 
suppose  to  be  the  very  snowstorm  which  supplied  those 
artists  with  their  material,  were  it  not  for  the  date  on  the 
plate  itself,  which  places  it  a  month  earlier. 

Another  etcher,  also  serving  with  the  National  Guard, 
who  recorded  his  pictorial  impressions  on  the  copper- 
plate, was  Maxime  Lalanne.    His  series,  which   con- 

85 


tains  twelve  plates  besides  a  supplementary  plate,  was 
published  under  the  title,  Souvenirs  artistiques  du  siege 
de  Paris. 

"C'est  egal!"  exclaims  Beraldi  cataloguing  it.  "Le 
siege  de  Paris  aboutissant  a  des  souvenirs  '  artistiques,' 
quel  titre,  quand  on  y  pensel" 

One  is,  perhaps,  inclined  to  agree  with  Beraldi  at 
first.  But  after  all,  why  not?  he  concludes  on  reflection. 
The  Souvenirs,  which  give  a  very  fair  idea  of  the  charac- 
ter of  Lalanne's  sometimes  thin,  but  always  distin- 
guished linear  technique,  are  certainly  none  the  worse 
for  being  artistiques,  and  constitute  a  valuable  record  of 
certain  aspects  of  Paris  during  the  siege. 

They  are  particularly  interesting  if  studied  in  conjunc- 
tion with  Goncourt's  record  of  impressions  preserved  in 
the  Journal  du  Siege,  for  which,  it  might  almost  seem 
that  they  were  made  as  illustrations,  so  close,  very 
often,  is  the  correspondence  in  the  choice  of  subject,  if 
not  in  the  style  of  treatment. 

This,  always  heightened  and  imaginative  in  Gon- 
court,  tends  to  become  Hteral  and  matter-of-fact  in  La- 
lanne.  Take,  for  example,  the  plate  entitled  Avenue  de 
Boulogne  which  shows  how  the  superb  trees  had  been 
ruthlessly  felled  and  the  stumps  sharpened  so  that  the 
pointed  stakes  would  serve  as  an  obstacle  to  the  enemy's 
advance.  The  impression  which  Lalanne  has  given  is 
simply  that  of  some  ugly  llano  estacado.  Goncourt,  on 
the  other  hand,  has  been  impressed  by  the  way  in  which 
"these  great  trees  fall  under  the  axe,  swaying  to  and  fro 
like  men  fatally  wounded,"  and,  as  he  views  the  stakes 
which  are  like  the  upturned  teeth  of  some  "sinister  har- 
row," hate  rises  in  his  heart  "for  these  Prussians,  who 
bring  about  such  assassinations  of  nature." 

86 


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Both  artists  have  noted  the  singular  transformation 
of  the  pretty  httle  Mare  d'Auteuil  which,  "half  drained 
by  the  cattle  which  kneel  to  drink  among  its  reeds," 
its  banks  denuded  of  their  trees  and  trampled  by  the 
herds  collected  here  by  the  commissariat,  presents,  in 
Lalanne's  plate,  the  appearance  of  a  world  returned 
entirely  to  primal  chaos,  in  whose  marshy  wastes,  once 
peopled  plains,  the  last  man  sits  on  a  stump  fishing  for 
his  obscene  food. 

A  similar  correspondence  is  to  be  noted  in  their 
rendering  of  the  view,  from  Point-du-Jour,  of  the  Pont- 
Viaduc,  whose  arches,  "barricaded  and  closed  with 
great  wooden  cross-beams,"  as  Goncourt  describes  them, 
supply  the  classical  and  somewhat  academic  Lalanne 
with  a  striking  architectural  motive  which  quite  makes 
him  forget  that  his  real  subject  is  the  siege! 

V 

The  supplementary  plate  in  Lalanne's  series,  Le 
section  bastion  1^.9  et  porte  Brieu,  has  an  added  per- 
sonal interest  in  that  it  is  dedicated  "A  notre  excellent 
capitaine  et  ami  Cadart,  souvenir  cles  gardes  de  la  Se  cie, 
du  8e  Bon." 

Cadart,  of  course,  was  Lalanne's  pul^lisher,  as  he  was 
of  so  many  other  French  etchers  in  the  second  half  of  the 
last  century,  when  etching  had  become  a  popular  art, 
and  there  had  grown  up  a  commercial  demand  for  prints. 
Taking  advantage  of  this  antl  of  the  popuhirity  of  the 
subject,  Cadart  issued  a  number  of  sets  of  etchings 
illustrating  the  siege  and  Commune.  Among  the  best 
after  Lalanne's  —  and  very  much  more  in  the  spirit 
of  true  illustrations  than  his  slight  sketches  aspired  to 

87 


be  —  were  those  by  Martial  (Adolphe  Martial  Pote- 
ment) :  Le  Prussien  chez  nous,  Paris  en  siege,  Paris 
sous  le  commune,  Paris  incendie,  and  several  others. 

In  connection  with  these  too  (though  Martial  often 
supplies  a  text  of  his  own  either  in  verse  or  in  prose),  as 
well  as  with  the  series  depicting  types  and  costumes 
etched  by  Bertall  and  published  with  English  text  in  a 
volume  entitled  Tlie  Communists  of  Paris,  one  should 
read  Goncourt's  Journal,  which  records  more  than  one 
exciting  adventure,  often  in  the  company  of  his  friends, 
Bracquemond  and  Burty.  Bracquemond,  still  liable  for 
military  duty,  and  afraitl  of  being  drafted  into  the 
National  Guard  at  the  orders  of  the  Commune,  joined 
the  medical  staff  as  a  hospital  helper,  while  Burty's 
house,  one  of  Goncourt's  headquarters  in  Paris,  was 
directly  in  the  line  of  march  of  the  troops  of  the  Re- 
publique  from  Versailles  and  so  an  excellent,  if  some- 
what hazardous,  vantage  point  for  the  observation  of 

^  For  a  new  generation  of  print-lovers,  it  may  be  interesting  to  note 
what  the  late  Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton  had  to  say  of  this  etcher  who 
was  once  regarded  as  one  of  the  masters  of  his  art  in  Paris. 

"The  technical  skill  of  Martial  is  extraordinary,"  writes  Hamerton, 
after  praising  his  enormous  industry,  "and  a  few  years  ago,  before 
skill  in  etching  became  more  general  in  France,  ho  had  scarcely  an 
equal  in  this  kind  of  ability.  For  example,  Martial  would  go  to  a  gal- 
lery of  pictures  and  make  sketches  there  in  his  note-book,  and  after- 
wards go  home  and  take  several  large  plates  of  copper,  and  write  on 
the  copper  an  account  of  the  pictures,  and  illustrate  it  as  he  went  on 
by  many  sketches  of  them  etched  in  the  text,  feeling  quite  sure  that 
every  one  of  the  sketches  would  be  successful.  .  .  .  Many  another  feat 
of  cleverness  has  he  accomplished.  .  .  .  His  two  best  qualities  are  a 
brilliantly  clear  conception  of  facts,  and  perfect  manual  skill.  He  has 
no  creative  imagination,  nor  any  tenderness;  and  therefore  his  work, 
though  always  admirable,  can  never  be  charming;  never  have  any 
hold  upon  the  heart.  But  notwithstanding  this  restriction,  it  is  emi- 
nently valuable  work  in  its  own  way,  and  future  students  of  the  his- 
tory of  Paris  will  be,  or  ought  to  be,  very  grateful  for  it."  Martial's 
collection  of  etchings  of  old. Paris  contains  no  less  than  three  hundred 
plates,  exclu.sive  of  those  included  in  numerous  series  such  as  I  have 
mentioned,  and  his  Salons. 

88 


Martial.     Arms  of  the  City  of  Paris 

(Plate  suppressed  by  the  Government) 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  16%  X  15  inches 

The  New  York  Public  Library 


fierce  street-fighting  from  behind  barricades  on  the 
Boulevard. 

Once  Goncourt  went  with  Burty  to  call  on  the  great 
Dutch  artist,  Jongkind,  who  had  gone  on  quietly  living 
in  one  of  the  more  remote  quarters  all  through  the  insur- 
rection. 

"I  was  one  of  the  first  to  appreciate  the  painter," 
writes  Goncourt,  "but  I  had  not  previously  met  the 
man  himself.  Imagine  a  ])ig  l)lond  devil  of  a  fellow,  with 
eyes  of  Delft  blue,  and  a  mouth  whose  corners  droop, 
painting  away  in  a  knitted  waistcoat,  and  with  a  Dutch 
sailor's  cap  on  his  head. 

"He  has,  on  his  easel,  a  picture  of  a  Parisian  hanlieu, 
with  a  loamy  bank  represented  by  a  delicious  scrawl. 
He  shows  us  sketches  of  the  streets  of  Paris,  of  the  Quar- 
tier  Mouffetard,  of  the  approaches  to  Saint-Medard, 
where  the  enchantment  of  the  gray  and  mottled  colors 
of  the  Paris  plaster  seems  to  have  been  surprised  by  a 
magician,  in  a  radiant  aqueous  atmosphere. 

"Then  there  are,  in  the  card-board  boxes,  scribbled 
sketches  on  paper,  phantasmagorias  of  sky  and  of 
water,  the  fireworks-like  colorations  of  the  ether. 

"He  shows  us  all  this  honifacement,  talking  a  patois  of 
Dutch  and  French  through  which  piei'ces  at  times  the 
bitterness  of  a  great  talent  —  of  a  very  great  talent  — 
which  requires  but  3,000  francs  a  year,  and  has  not 
always  been  able  to  earn  even  that  small  amount  in 
order  to  live.  .  .  .  But  imnuMliately,  his  manner  soften- 
ing once  more,  he  speaks,  with  sadness,  of  his  art,  of  his 
struggle,  of  his  constant  striving,  which  renders  him, 
he  says,  the  unhappiest  of  men. 

"In  the  meantime,  there  hovers  about  him,  with  the 
caressing  words  mothers  have  for  their  children,  a  short 

89 


woman,  with  silver  locks  and  with  thick  moustaches  — 
an  angel  of  devotion  who  looks  like  a  vwandiere  of  the 
Imperial  'Old  Guard.' 

''The  seance  is  long.  The  examination  of  the  boxes 
has  lasted  several  hours.  Jongkind  talks  much.  He 
grows  animated  on  the  subject  of  the  politics  of  the 
Commune.  Suddenly  his  speech  is  confused,  grows  more 
Dutch,  his  words  become  bizarre,  incoherent.  .  .  .  He 
begins  to  babble  of  the  agents  of  Louis  XVII,  of  horrible 
things  he  claims  to  have  seen.  He  jumps  up,  as  if  moved 
by  a  spring.  'Look,  an  electric  current  has  just  passed 
me!'  and  he  whistles  to  imitate  the  sound  of  a  rifle- 
ball " 

VI 

The  two  friends  also  called,  at  the  H6tel-de-Ville,  on 
Verlaine,  who  had  become  involved  in  the  Commune 
through  weakness  and,  as  it  were,  almost  against  his 
own  will.  He  told  Goncourt  and  Burty  that  he  had  had  to 
combat  a  proposition  on  the  part  of  the  insurrectionists 
for  the  destruction  of  Notre-Dame. 

This  was  after  the  destruction  of  the  Vendome  column, 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  incidents  of  the  Commune, 
to  which,  however,  and  to  the  part  played  in  it  by  the 
painter,  Gustave  Courbet,  Goncourt  makes  but  a  pass- 
ing reference.  Others  have  told  the  singular  story,  the 
latest  being  Mr.  Ernest  A.  Vizetelly,  an  eyewitness,  in 
a  recent  volume  of  reminiscences.^ 

"Gustave  Courbet,"  he  writes,  "peasant-hke  in  ap- 
pearance, puffed  out  with  beer,  good-humored,  simple- 
minded,  and  yet  very  conceited,  was  one  of  the  curiosi- 

^  My  Adventures  in  the  Commune,  by  Ernest  Vizetelly.  New  York: 
Duffield  &  Co.,  1915. 

90 


ties  of  the  Commune.  How  a  great  artist,  such  as  he 
was,  could  have  consented  to  join  the  band  of  the  Hotel- 
de-Ville,  amazed  many  of  his  contemporaries.  The 
story  that  he  positively  hated  the  Vendome  column  and 
became  a  member  of  the  Commune  for  the  one  express 
purpose  of  seeing  it  pulled  down,  is  merely  a  foolish 
legend,  and  one  may  assume  that  foolish  vanity  alone 
led  Courbet  to  accept  the  honor  thrust  upon  him." 

And  yet,  as  Mr.  Vizetelly  himself  proceeds  to  show,  it 
is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  destruction  of  this  monu- 
ment to  Napoleon  and  "Csesarism"  had  long  been  a 
mania  with  Courbet,  who  hated  the  Second  Empire  to 
such  an  extent  that  he  had  even  refused  to  accept  the 
decoration  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  at  the  hand  of  the 
Emperor. 

"At  the  time  of  the  German  siege  of  Paris,"  writes 
Vizetelly,  "Courbet  proposed  that  the  column  should  be 
pulled  down  and  melted  in  conjunction  with  all  the 
French  and  German  guns  of  the  period,  with  the  view  of 
erecting  with  the  metal  a  new  and  gigantic  monument 
which  should  ])e  dedicated  to  universal  peace  and  repub- 
licanism. Naturally,  that  Utopian  idea  found  few  sup- 
porters even  among  the  French,  and  certainly  none  on 
the  side  of  Bismarck's  'big  battalions.'  At  the  Com- 
mune's sitting  on  April  2,  however,  both  Courl^et  and 
J.  B.  Clement  complained  of  the  delay  in  pulling  down 
the  column,  whereupon  they  were  assured  by  Paschal 
Grousset  and  Andrieu  that  it  was  only  a  matter  of  a  few 
days,  and  that  the  work  had  been  entrusted  to  two  engin- 
eers of  ability  who  had  assumed  all  responsibilit}^  for 
the  undertaking.  May  5  was  the  next  date  fixed  for  the 
demolition,  but  it  went  by  without  anything  being  done, 
and  the  Commune  thereupon  declared  that  there  should 


be  a  fine  of  500  francs  for  each  day's  delay,  the  amount 
to  be  deducted  from  the  original  contract  price  for  the 
demolition,  which  was  no  less  than  36,000  francs." 

Finally  it  was  announced  officially  that  the  column 
would  fall  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  May  16. 

"Long  before  the  appointed  hour,  the  Rue  de  la  Paix 
was  a  sea  of  heads.  .  .  .  We  were  all  there  —  either  in 
the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  or  the  Rue  de  Castiglione  or  in  some 
side  street  whence  a  glimpse  of  the  column  could  be 
obtained.  I  myself,  my  father  and  my  brother  Arthur 
were  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix.  Every  balcony  there  was 
crowded,  heads  peeped  out  of  every  window,  and  no 
little  anxiety  was  blended  with  the  general  excitement, 
for  there  might  be  some  havoc  should  the  column  collide 
in  its  fall  with  one  or  another  building." 

The  long  wait  was  beguiled  by  the  music  of  bands  and 
the  appearance  of  gaudily  dressed  and  gold-braided  of- 
ficials on  the  balcony  of  the  Ministry  of  Justice.  At  length 
the  capstans  began  to  work. 

"But  all  at  once  there  came  a  strange,  strident  sound. 
Did  it  emanate  from  the  column?  Everybody  became 
nervous,  anxious,  excited.  Was  there  going  to  be  an 
accident  —  perhaps  a  disaster?  No !  only  one  of  the 
cables  fixed  to  the  summit  of  the  column  had  snapped. 
That,  unfortunately,  meant  a  further  delay,  and,  in  fact, 
nearly  two  hours  elapsed  before  everything  was  made 
right  again.  Meantime  we  were  regaled  with  more  '  Mar- 
seillaise,' more  'Chant  du  Depart,'  more  'Chant  des 
Girondins.'  According  to  my  watch  (as  noted  in  my 
diary)  operations  only  became  effective  at  a  quarter- 
past  five  o'clock.  Even  then  the  capstans  performed 
their  work  very  slowly,  and  the  half-hour  was  reached 
before  the  column  really  began  to  oscillate.    Swiftly, 

92 


.  S^f'~ 


Hm   W^. 


.  >.Wit  C|l«fen«i   low,   ttW.  '-.y.'T  rli,i!_  ^.n  ?,'n.-.i'      I     w"t 
,  ^■-^'■-'Wj«,nVi-      .!^     aiL  ".WVTL Tie.  iiwitin'; 

'  ■,■     .-..'.I   VIA,  uMt TlMntma, ,  t  ouiwo 


---^  - ' 


Martial.     L.\  Colonne  de  la  Pl.\ce  Vendome 

From  "Paris  sous  la  Commune" 

Size  of  the  original  etching,  9%  X  GVi  inches 

The  New  York  Public  Library 


however,  came  the  sequel.  In  another  instant  the  great 
pile  was  bending  in  our  direction.  Some  of  the  lower 
plates  of  bronze  had  been  removed  and  some  of  the 
masonry,  just  above  the  pedestal,  cut  to  a  certain  depth. 
...  A  great  bed  of  fascines,  sand,  and  manure  had  been 
prepared  for  the  reception  of  the  lofty  pile.  It  came 
down  in  its  entirety  .  .  .  until  a  certain  angle  was 
reached.  Then,  all  at  once,  it  split  into  three  sections, 
and  in  that  wise  fell  upon  the  l^ed  prepared  for  it.  There 
was  a  loud  thud.  Particles  of  manure  and  sand  arose, 
cloud-like,  and  were  carried  hither  and  thither.  The 
ground  trembled  beneath  one,  houses  shook,  windows 
rattled,  but  there  was  no  damage. 

"As  the  dust  cleared  away,  I  perceived  Glais-Bizoin, 
one  of  Gambetta's  coadjutors  during  the  war  in  the 
provinces,  standing  on  the  column's  pedestal,  waving 
his  hat,  with  a  queer  smile  upon  his  ])unchinello  face. 
Near  him  stood  '  General '  Bergeret  and  several  guards, 
waving  large  red  flags.  Loud  were  the  shouts  of  '  Vive  la 
Commune! '  Right  quickly  did  one  of  the  Guards'  bands 
strike  up  the  'Marseillaise,'  but  amidst  and  above  it  I 
suddenly  heard  the  strains  of  'Hail,  Columbia?'  played 
violently  on  a  piano  l)y  some  Yankee  girl  belonging  to  a 
party  of  Americans  who  had  installed  themselves  on  the 
first  floor  of  the  Hotel  Miral^eau.  They  came  out  on  to 
the  balcony  and  were  loud  in  their  plaudits.  In  those 
days  the  cult  of  Napoleon  had  no  disciples  in  the  United 
States.  Both  New  Yorkists  [sic]  and  Bostonians  knew 
but  one  hero  —  the  George  Washington,  who,  unlike 
Napoleon,  never  lied." 

Courbet  was  one  of  the  committee  api^ointed  to  super- 
intend the  removal  of  valuable  books  and  works  of  art 
from  the  house  of  M.  Thiers,  which  was  likewise  demol- 

93 


ished,  and  their  distribution  among  the  pubhc  museums 
and  hbraries.  These  were  all  deposited  in  the  Tuileries, 
however,  where  they  are  said  to  have  perished  when 
that  palace  was  consumed  by  the  flames. 

About  this  same  time  there  occurred  a  serious  split  in 
the  Communists'  ranks,  and  Courbet  was  among  those 
who  signed  a  protest  complaining  that  the  Commune 
had  abandoned  all  direct  responsibility  and  thrown  to 
the  winds  its  original  policy  of  political  and  social  re- 
form. The  signatories  threatened  that  they  would  no 
longer  attend  the  deliberations  of  the  Commune,  and 
were  accused  of  wishing  to  save  their  own  skins  in  the 
great  crisis  that  was  now  felt  to  be  at  hand. 

Courbet's  attitude  in  these  latter  days,  as  well  as  his 
great  fame  as  an  artist,  may,  indeed,  have  had  some 
effect  in  ameliorating  the  judgment  passed  upon  him 
by  the  courtmartial  at  the  end  of  the  Commune.  Though 
a  number  of  his  fellow-prisoners  were  condemned  to 
transportation,  deportation,  or  hard  labor  for  life, 
Courbet  was  sentenced  to  only  six  months'  imprison- 
ment and  the  payment  of  a  fine  of  1500  francs.  His 
last  years  were  spent  in  Switzerland,  where  he  died  in 
1877.  The  monument,  in  whose  demolition  he  had  been 
the  leading  spirit,  was  afterwards  restored. 


VII 

COROT    AS    A    LITHOGRAPHER 
I 

'N  the  preceding  chapter,  I  wrote  of  the 
French  artists  who  remained  in  Paris  dur- 
ing the  Siege,  and  who,  in  many  instances, 
as  members  of  the  National  Guard  or  of 
the  Mobiles,  bore  an  active  part  in  the  defence  of  the 
capital. 

The  list,  though  it  included  Puvis  de  Chavannes, 
Courbet,  Regnault,  Bracquemond,  Lalanne,  and  others, 
was  far  from  complete.  For  example,  I  made  no  men- 
tion of  Corot.  Yet,  during  the  fateful  winter  of  1870- 
71,  there  was  in  the  beleaguered  city  no  more  helpful 
or  patriotic  spirit  than  that  of  the  great  lyric  landscape 
artist  who  expressed  his  apocalyptic  sense  of  events  in 
the  strange,  visionary  painting,  so  unlike  the  rest  of  his 
work,  Paris  Incendiee. 

Though  seventy-five  years  old,  Corot  not  only  re- 
fused to  leave  Paris  while  there  was  yet  time,  but  even 
bought  a  rifle  in  order  to  take  his  place  on  the  ram- 
parts. When  he  saw  that  he  was  not  strong  enough  for 
this,  he  found  other  forms  of  useful  activity.  If  he  could 
not  give  himself,  he  could  at  least  give  his  art  for  the 
Fatherland.  So  he  worked  away  with  redoubled  energy, 
selling  his  pictures,  and  employing   the   considerable 


sums  obtained  in  this  way  to  relieve  in  some  measure 
the  horrors  of  the  Siege. 

"He  went  among  the  ambulances  and  hospitals,"  we 
are  told  by  one  writer,  M.  Geffroy,  "emptying  his  hands 
and  his  pockets,"  and  at  one  time  he  sent  a  large  sum 
to  the  authorities  with  a  note  expressing  the  wish  that 
it  might  be  employed  for  "the  manufacture  of  the  can- 
non required  to  drive  the  Prussians  out  of  the  woods 
of  Ville  d'Avray. "  Then,  later,  he  sent  ten  thousand 
francs  for  "the  liberation  of  the  country"  and  refused 
to  take  it  back  when  the  war  was  over.  Instead,  with 
characteristic  compassion  and  generosity,  he  ordered 
it  turned  over  to  the  poor  of  the  tenth  arrondisse- 
ment. 

Even  when  Paris  had  capitulated  and  the  Siege  was 
raised,  Corot  was  loth  to  leave  the  capital,  and  might 
have  remained  to  experience  all  the  added  horrors  of 
the  Commune,  had  it  not  been  for  the  entreaties  of  his 
friend  and  future  cataloguer,  M.  Alfred  Robaut,  who 
came  down  from  Douai  and  persuaded  the  old  painter 
to  return  with  him  to  his  home  in  the  North. 

Robaut  was  the  son-in-law  of  that  provincial  painter 
of  Arras,  Constant  Dutilleux,  who,  in  1847,  while  yet 
unknown  to  Corot,  —  and  while  Corot  himself  was  yet 
unknown  to  the  world  at  large,  —  wrote  the  latter 
expressing  profound  admiration  for  his  art.  Dutilleux 
remained,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  in  1867,  the  faithful 
friend  and  humble  disciple  of  the  great  artist,  whom 
he  taught  one  thing  at  least  —  how  to  make  cliches- 
verres.  He  had,  indeed,  two  major  passions  in  his 
obscure  and  laborious  life  —  Corot  and  Delacroix  — 
and  both  of  these  were  shared  to  the  fullest  extent  by 
Robaut. 


CoROT.     Le  Clocher  de  St.  Nicolas-Lez-Arras 

Size  of  the  original  lithograph,  11  X  8%  inches 

In  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston 


The  latter's  father  had  been  a  skilful  designer.  He 
himself  grew  up  surrounded  by  lithographic  presses, 
and  early  served  his  apprenticeship  in  the  art  of  draw- 
ing on  the  stone.  What  more  natural,  therefore,  than 
that  he  should  place  a  lithographic  crayon  between  the 
fingers  of  his  distinguished  guest,  and  encourage  him 
to  make  a  number  of  drawings  on  autographic  paper? 

Corot,  it  is  said,  liked  the  freedom  of  handling  which 
the  medium  permitted;  and,  evenings,  when  the  day's 
painting  was  done,  the  old  artist  gave  rein  to  his  ima- 
gination and  fancy.  He  made  altogether  thirteen  de- 
signs in  this  way  in  the  spring  of  1871,  and  they  were 
carefully  transferred  to  the  stone  by  Robaut  himself, 
who,  in  1872,  arranged  for  the  publication  of  twelve, 
the  thirteenth.  Sous  Bois,  being  merely  a  preliminary 
experiment  in  the  handling  of  the  medium.  Fifty  copies 
only  were  issued  of  this  set,  which  is  to-day  one  of  the 
rarest  treasures  of  French  black-and-white  art  in  the 
nineteenth  century.^ 

1  Cover:  DOUZE  CROQUIS  &  DESSINS  ORIGINAUX  sur 
papier  Autographique  par  COROT  —  tires  d  Cinquante  Exemplaires. 
—  N^imero  .  .  .  figne  [sic]de  VAuteiir  —  Paris.  Rue  Lafayette  No.  113, 
Rue  Bonaparte  No.  18,  d,  la  Lihrairie  artistique  et  chez  les  principaux 
MarcJiandn  d'Estampes.  —  Imp.  Lemercier  &  Cie,  rue  de  Seine,  57, 
Paris. 

Translation  of  the  notioe  printed  on  an  inside  leaf:  — 

"We  offer  to  admirers  of  M.  Corot's  art,  so  much  appreciated  to- 
day, a  hitherto  unpublished  collection  of  twelve  sketches  and  compo- 
sitions drawn  by  him  on  autographic  paper,  and  transferred  by  us 
directly  to  the  stone. 

"One  thus  has  before  him  the  work  of  the  Master,  just  as  it  came 
from  his  hand,  and  we  beg  to  lay  stress  on  this  point;  for,  in  the  work 
of  an  artist  like  M.  Corot,  there  is  always  an  elusive  element  of  poetry 
that  no  alien  crayon  can  possibly  render. 

"After  having  remained  in  Paris  throughout  the  Siege,  M.  Corot 
came  North  in  April,  1871,  to  rest.  Both  at  Arras  and  at  Douai  he 
made  studies  and  even  painted  some  important  pictures,  while  from 
time  to  time,  for  the  sake  of  varying  his  work,  he  produced,  with  his 

97 


As  a  matter  of  fact,  these  autographs  were  by  no 
means  Corot's  first  essays  in  the  field  of  hthography. 
While  yet  a  young  man,  in  the  establishment  of  M. 
Delalain,  the  cloth-merchant,  and  before  he  had  re- 
ceived the  slightest  training  as  an  artist,  he  made  at 
least  three  designs  on  the  stone.  Of  them  no  trace  re- 
mains, even  in  the  Bibliotheciue  Nationale,  although 
the  stationer,  Collas,  at  whose  shop  in  the  Passage  Fey- 
deau  the  prints  were  shown,  was  supposed  to  have 
deposited  there  the  three  copies  required  by  law;  but 
Corot  roughly  sketched  two  from  memory  for  Robaut, 
who  reproduced  them  in  their  proper  sequence  in  his 
monumental  catalogue.  With  true  Boswellian  frugality 
and  prudent  foresight,  the  latter  also  carefully  pre- 
served the  crumbs  of  comment  with  which  they  were 
accompanied  in  the  making. 

"Oh,  how  ugly  and  awkward  that  must  have  been!" 
Corot  exclaimed,  as  he  made  the  sketch  of  The  Plague 
at  Barcelona,  which  shows  a  Spanish  peasant,  covered 
with  a  great  cape,  seated  in  the  foreground  of  a  deso- 
late, fever-stricken  landscape.    "For,  you  know,"  he 

usual  imaginative  fecundity,  the  compositions  and  sketches  which  we 
have  collected  and  published  in  an  edition  limited  to  fifty  numbered 
copies. 

"We  are  confident  that  these  expressions,  however  hasty  at  times, 
of  the  thought  of  the  Master,  will  be  appreciated  by  collectors  and 
artists.  For  this  reason  we  have  not  wished  to  make  any  selection, 
believing  that  admirers  of  the  work  of  M.  Corot  will  be  grateful  to  us 
for  furnishing  even  the  slightest  sketches  of  such  a  painter,  in  their 
frank  and  spontaneous  execution.  Those  who  have  been  privileged  to 
meet  and  know  him,  will  recognize  in  them  the  echo,  as  it  were,  of  his 
always  varied  and  delightful  conversation. 

"Some  of  these  drawings  are,  moreover,  very  finely  executed,  the 
great  artist  having  lavished  every  care  on  them.  They  contain  there- 
fore much  of  the  charm  of  his  incomparable  paintings. 

"Paris,  September,  1872." 

The  set  owned  by  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston,  is  No.  31. 

98 


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CoROT.     Le  Dormoir  DES  Vaches 

Size  of  the  original  lithograph,  6%X  5%  inches 

In  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston 


continued,  "I  was  absolutely  ignorant  of  my  trade, 
and  had  no  leisure  to  learn  it.  I  was  still  living  with  M. 
Delalain,  and  it  was  only  at  night  I  escaped  to  carry 
my  stones  to  Engelman"  —  one  of  the  three  great 
lithographic  printers  and  publishers  in  Paris  at  that 
period,  when  the  new  art,  invented  or  discovered  by 
the  Bavarian  Senefelder,  was  carried  to  its  very  zenith 
by  such  artists  as  Isabey,  Harding,  and  Bonington. 

Another  of  these  crude  early  compositions,  inspired, 
no  doubt,  by  either  Charlet  or  Raffet,  was  called  The 
Old  Guard  Dies  hut  Never  Surrenders. 

"I  recall,"  said  Corot,  as  his  pencil  ran  rapidly  over 
the  paper,  "that  I  had  backed  my  grenadier  up  against 
a  tree  ...  in  his  arms  he  held  his  flag,  resolved  to  aban- 
don it  only  with  his  death.  ...  I  see  him  again  with 
his  great  coat  and  gaiters.  .  .  .  Before  him,  three  to 
one,  the  English  threatened  him  with  their  bayonets." 

The  recollection  of  recent  humiliations  to  the  French 
arms  (this  was  in  1873)  led  him  to  add:  "To-day  it 
would  be  possible  to  make  a  sad  counterpart  of  this 
drawing;  but  let  us  not  dwell  too  much  upon  this  fact, 
and  let  us  console  ourselves  with  nature." 

Of  a  third  lithograph,  Une  Fete  de  Village,  Corot  him- 
self could  recall  nothing  more,  after  an  interval  of  half 
a  century,  than  the  title  and  the  fact  that  the  composi- 
tion contained  a  large  number  of  figures. 


II 


As  an  acolyte  of  business,  Corot  was  hardly  a  success. 
It  is  said  that  he  was  forced  to  leave  the  first  establish- 
ment where  his  father  placed  him,  because  he  soiled  the 
fabrics  with  his  paint-stained  fingers.    Having  shown 

99 


not  the  slightest  aptitude  for  salesmanship  in  his  second 
place,  he  was  finally  set  to  work  outside  the  establish- 
ment, carrying  heavy  packages  through  the  streets. 
But  he  was  equally  a  failure  in  this  department.  More 
than  once  his  employer,  M.  Delalain,  came  across  him 
either  loitering  along  and  looking  up  at  the  clouds,  or 
else  standing  before  the  shops  in  whose  windows  prints 
and  other  pictures  were  displayed,  as  one  may  see  in 
Carl  Vernet's  cover  sketch  for  an  album  issued  by 
Delpech — another  of  the  great  hthographic  publishers 
of  the  period,  like  Engelman. 

Every  one  knows  how,  finally,  in  1822,  Corot's  father 
consented  to  his  son's  abandoning  the  mercantile  career 
he  had  marked  out  for  him,  and  becoming  an  artist. 
The  young  man  immediately  entered  the  studio  of 
Michallon,  and  thereafter,  wrapped  up  in  his  painting, 
he  apparently  quite  forgot  the  humbler  medium  in 
which  he  had  made  his  obscure  debut  as  an  original 
artist.  Only  once  before  1871  did  he,  so  far  as  is  known, 
again  touch  a  lithographic  crayon,  and  that  was  merely 
to  make  a  cover  for  a  little  brochure.  La  Caisse 
d'Epargne,  a  vaudeville,  both  words  and  music  of  which 
were  written  by  the  sons  of  Corot's  old  patron,  M. 
Delalain.  It  represented  Madame  Rose  in  the  role  of 
Mere  Boisseau,  at  the  Thedtre-Comte,  in  1836,  and  of 
this  work  Robaut  possessed  a  unique  example. 

In  1845  Corot's  interest  in  Charles  Jacque's  experi- 
ments with  the  needle  led  him  to  etch  a  plate,  the 
Souvenir  de  Toscane,  and  later,  urged  by  his  friends 
Bracquemond,  Michelin,  and  others,  he  made  a  dozen 
or  so  delightful  etchings  which,  in  spite  of  many  evi- 
dent shortcomings,  succeed  to  an  extraordinary  degree 
in  expressing  the  most  poetic  aspects  of  Corot's  genius. 

100 


?  rr\ 


.  -.  a 


But  though,  of  the  two,  hthography  would,  on  the 
whole,  have  seemed  much  the  more  sympathetic 
medium,  it  remained  neglected  by  him  for  nearly  half 
a  century. 

According  to  Mr.  Joseph  Pennell,  Corot's  lithographs 
or  autographs,  like  those  of  so  many  other  contempo- 
rary painters  who  made  occasional  use  of  transfer  paper, 
''reveal  no  appreciation  of  the  lithographic  quality, 
and  are  precisely  like  his  drawings  in  other  mediums." 
What  he  means,  doubtless,  is  that  neither  Corot,  Cour- 
bet,  Jacque,  nor  Millet,  ever  availed  himself  of  the 
full  resources  of  the  lithographic  art.  They  did  not, 
like  its  pioneer  exploiters,  seek  to  perform  feats  of 
amazing  virtuosity,  to  rival  oil  painting  in  its  own  field 
with  wonderful  effects  of  tone  and  color.  But  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  how,  as  far  as  they  went,  they  used  it  any 
less  idiomatically  than  their  predecessors. 

"The  lithographs  of  Corot  are  particularly  dehghtful," 
writes  M.  Loys  Delteil,  who  has  compiled  a  catalogue 
of  the  artist's  black-and-white  work  in  Le  Peintre 
Graveur  Illustre.  "They  express  in  the  highest  degree 
the  qualities  of  charm,  style,  and  naive  skill  charac- 
teristic of  Corot.  On  lithographic  transfer  paper  (papier 
caique  autographique),  the  master  felt  more  at  ease  than 
on  copper  or  on  glass ;  consequently  he  was  able  to  give 
free  rein  to  his  imagination,  based  as  it  was  on  pro- 
found knowledge,  and  put  into  practice  the  maxim  in- 
scribed in  one  of  his  notebooks:  "  I  am  never  in  a  hurry 
about  detail;  the  masses  and  the  character  of  a  pic- 
ture interest  me  before  everything.  When  it  is  well 
planned  out,  I  seek  the  subtleties  both  of  form  and  of 
colour." 


101 


Ill 

What,  perhaps,  first  strikes  one  in  examining  these 
hthographs,  is  their  variety  —  even  their  marked  diver- 
sity of  manner.  Some,  Hke  Le  Clocher  de  St.  Nicolas- 
Uz- Arras  and  Le  Repos  des  Philosophes,  are  compara- 
tively finished  drawings.  Others,  hke  La  Tour  Isolee, 
executed  with  pen  and  ink  instead  of  with  hthographic 
crayon,  and  Sous  Bois,  Corot's  first  attempt  on  auto- 
graphic paper,  are  httle  more  than  casual  scrawls,  though 
they  convey  with  sure  science  precisely  what  the  artist 
sought  to  express. 

And  the  subject-matter  is  as  diverse  as  the  style  of 
handling.  Glimpses  of  the  level,  clean-washed,  wind- 
swept north  country  where  Corot  was  almost  as  much 
at  home  as  in  the  woods  of  Ville  d'Avray,  alternate 
with  reminiscences  of  that  Italian  land  which  never 
ceased  to  allure,  linking  him,  the  modern  Frenchman, 
subtle  interpreter  of  the  very  soul  of  nature,  so  unmis- 
takably with  the  classic  Claude  Lorrain  —  himself 
naturalist  and  romantic  nature-lover  in  his  own  day. 
Finally  there  are  those  pure  and  poetic  evocations  of 
the  remote  pagan  past,  such  as  Sapho  and  Le  Repos 
des  Philosophes,  in  which  the  imaginative  side  of  his 
curiously  double  and  composite  art  fought  free  of  fact 
and  found  complete,  untrammelled  expression. 

Whatever  its  theme  or  its  treatment,  there  is  not  one 
of  these  lithographs  that  has  not  its  own  peculiar  beauty, 
or  at  least  suggestion  of  loveliness.  This,  naturally,  is  not 
to  say  that  some  are  not  better  than  others,  or  that  there 
are  not  even  comparative  failures  in  the  group.  In  the 
Sapho,  for  example,  the  lines  of  the  composition,  as 

102 


->S>'_.»«!?'^p;  ►'—■ '-*! 


i'^K^^^^^M^'^^^ 


CoROT.     Le  Repos  des  Philosophes 

Size  of  the  original  lithograph,  8"/]u  X  Oii/m  inches 

In  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston 


X   m 


o    M  - 


well  as  the  lack  of  detail  and  of  contrast  between  the 
dark  tones  of  the  foliage  and  foreground^  produce  a 
heavy  effect,  and  the  drawing  of  the  figure  is  unfortu- 
nate. Le  Cavalier  dans  les  Roseaux  also  seems  a  trifle 
empty  and  awkward.  But  such  exceptions  serve  merely 
to  bring  into  higher  relief  the  charming  qualities  of  the 
series  as  a  whole. 

The  most  satisfactory  drawings  are  not,  necessarily, 
in  every  instance  the  most  completely  finished.  Le 
Clocher  de  St.  Nicolas-lez- Arras  and  Le  Repos  des  Philo- 
sophes  will  doubtless  please  those  for  whom  Corot's 
etchings  are  too  summary  and  abstract.  Some,  however, 
will  prefer  certain  others,  such  as  Saules  et  Peupliers 
Blancs,  Le  Moulin  de  Cuincy,  and  even  Le  Coup  de 
Vent  (so  suggestive  of  a  picture  with  the  same  title 
painted  several  years  before)  where  the  method  is  more 
direct  and  evocative,  as  in  the  etchings  themselves. 

It  is  a  commonplace  to  say  that  Corot  is  even 
more  a  poet  than  a  painter  —  that  he  is  concerned  far 
more  with  the  spirit  than  with  the  surface  and  texture 
of  things,  with  the  interpretation  of  certain  aspects  of 
nature  which  occur  over  and  over  again  in  all  his  work 
till  they  combine  to  form,  as  it  were,  a  sort  of  melodic 
accompaniment  to  it,  than  with  their  sheer  represen- 
tative power.  Yet  this  does  not  indicate  any  lack  of 
a  firm  grip  on  the  facts,  or  any  uncertainty  in  their 
rendering.  He  is  at  times  a  master  of  delicate  and 
expressive  draughtsmanship.  Take,  for  example,  Saules 
et  Peupliers  Blancs.  Who  else  could  so  simply  yet 
subtly  suggest  the  feathery  lightness  of  pollard  willows 
whose  tops,  a  glamour  of  misty  gray-green  in  the 
bright  spring  and  summer  breezes,  Corot  has  rendered 
with  that  soft  yet  free  sweep  of  his  crayon  which  is  at 

103 


once  an  enchantment  and  a  caress?  And  where  could 
one  find  fresher  observation  or  firmer  rendering  of  the 
larger  tree-forms  than  in  Le  Moulin  de  Cuincy  f 

This  last  print  is  particularly  pleasing  with  its  reflec- 
tions on  the  water,  its  filmy  clouds,  its  white-walled 
mill,  and  its  suggestion  of  peasant  figures  in  the  fore- 
ground. Without  being  carried  quite  so  far  as  some 
of  the  others,  even  more  is  suggested,  and  the  whole 
scene  seems  bathed  in  the  tender,  limpid  atmosphere 
of  early  spring,  when  the  skies  grow  dreamy  and  the  bare 
trees  begin  to  show  the  first  faint  signs  of  sap  stirring 
in  their  branches. 

Both  Le  Dormoir  des  Vaches  and  Souvenir  d'ltalie 
are  also  remarkably  beautiful  drawings,  especially  the 
latter,  which,  in  the  way  three  trees  of  different  shape 
and  size  fill  the  space  opened  against  the  sky  by  a  steeply 
descending  Italian  hillside,  offers  one  of  the  artist's 
effective  and  characteristic  compositions. 

IV 

Between  1871  and  1874  Corot  executed  three  other 
lithographs  on  autographic  paper.  Among  these  the 
most  attractive  perhaps  is  Souvenir  de  Sologne.  This 
piece,  which  originally  appeared  in  another,  miscella- 
neous, publication,^  is  not  reproduced  in  Robaut's 
catalogue,  where  it  is  indicated  as  a  cliche-verre  trans- 
ferred to  the  stone. 

"Would  it  not  be  more  accurate  to  call  it  a  drawing 

1  L' Album  contemporain,  collection  des  dessins  et  croquis  des  meil- 
leurs  artistes  de  notre  epoque  —  ouvrage  publie  sous  le  patronage  des 
mattres  contemporains  —  premiere  serie  de  25  planches.  Prix  15  fr., 
en  rente  au  siege  de  la  Societe  Ichnographique,  boulevard  St.  Mi- 
chel, 35. 

104 


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executed  directly  on  prepared  paper  and  then  trans- 
ferred?" asks  M.  Delteil,  who  answers  his  own  question 
in  the  affirmative.  However  this  may  be,  the  execution 
is  quite  different  from  that  of  any  of  the  other  auto- 
graphs, and  its  finer,  hghter,  and  tighter  hnework  is 
certainly  closer  to  that  of  the  diches-verres,  and  even 
of  the  etchings,  than  of  the  consummate  freedom  and 
ease  of  Corot's  sweeping  crayon  stroke,  in  the  drawings 
I  have  already  mentioned. 

Instead  of  criticizing  such  drawings  and  finding  them 
deficient  in  "lithographic  quality,"  one  wishes  that 
Corot  had  made  many  more  in  the  same  medium,  and 
that  all  had  been  issued  in  much  larger  editions.  For 
now  the  few  that  he  did  make  are  almost  hopelessly 
out  of  the  reach  of  the  collector,  while  no  photographic 
reproduction  can  give  any  adequate  idea  of  their  charm. 


THE    END 


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